‘Neglected disease’: Nepal readies for more snakebite cases as summer approaches

Kharel’s family members rushed her to the nearest snakebite treatment centre in the town of Nepalgunj. It took her less than 45 minutes to reach Bheri Hospital and receive treatment from what was identified as a cobra bite, which can kill people within one to two hours if left untreated.

“We used to follow various preventive measures to deter snakes from the house but have never encountered such bites in the neighbourhood before,” the 20-year-old student said. “Luckily, we reached the hospital in time.”

While Kharel received timely treatment, many others in Nepal are less fortunate. Snakebites remain a pervasive and deadly threat in the country, especially among its rural populations, but experts believe that targeted awareness campaigns and increased treatment access could halve the number of fatalities.

A 2022 research in the medical journal The Lancet, which is said to be the first snakebite epidemiological study in Nepal, estimated that there were as many as 37,661 snakebite cases and 3,225 deaths annually in the country’s southern plains. However, the government’s hospital-reported data from the past two decades show an average of 20,000 hospitalisations and about 1,000 deaths every year.

In 2017, the WHO listed snakebites as a neglected tropical disease due to a lack of attention it receives from the global health agenda.

In countries like Nepal, doctors say a reliance on traditional healers and unproven techniques, as well as delays in receiving critical medical interventions during the first few hours after being bitten, often lead to deaths.

“Around 80 per cent of people die before reaching hospitals,” Sanjib Kumar Sharma, a professor at the BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences in eastern Nepal, told This Week in