Who is affected?
Interview with David Warrell (Professor Emeritus of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, University of Oxford):
"Snake bite attacks are particularly vulnerable to impoverished group of people, these are the rural dwellers in tropical developing countries, farmers, pasteurists, herders, and their children. 40% of all snakebite victims are children less than the age of about 12 to 14.
They are amongst the most impoverished people in the world. They include the indigenous tribal people, for example, in areas like Yamasin parts of East Africa. As they have no political profile, their problems tend to be unknown, neglected, and even when understood, they’ve been forgotten and abandoned.
And that is the special argument for asking for attention and sympathy for problems of snake bite, so it is a neglected problem of rural people and in the tropical developing countries."
Cited from "Confronting the Neglected Problem of Snake Bite Envenoming: The Need for a Global Partnership"
José María Gutiérrez*, R. David G. Theakston, David A. Warrell
Envenoming resulting from snake bites is an important public health hazard in many regions, particularly in tropical and subtropical countries. Although antivenoms are being produced by various laboratories in every continent, the burden of snake bite envenoming— causing both morbidity and mortality— still has a great impact on the population and on health-care systems, especially in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America.
Unfortunately, public health authorities, nationally and internationally, have given little attention to this problem, relegating snake bite envenoming to the category of a major neglected disease of the 21st century.