Snakes kill thousands

The snake has terrorised mankind since the dawn of time – and still does, according to a new analysis.

Between 20,000 and 94,000 people globally die every year from snakebite, researchers reported last night.

And between 420,000 and 1.8 million get bitten, according to the study, published in the journal PLoS Medicine.

Researcher Janaka de Silva, of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, collected information from most of the world’s 227 countries, trawling information from snake-plagued countries, to make the estimate.

The greatest number of annual deaths is in India, where 11,000 people die every year.

But Dr de Silva warned that accurate information was hard to obtain in many countries.

Writing in the same journal, Jean-Philippe Chippaux from the the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in La Paz, Bolivia, says the research is a "preliminary but essential step in improving accessibility of antivenoms and the treatment of snakebite."

Kasturiratne A, Wickremasinghe AR, de Silva N, Gunawardena NK, Pathmeswaran A, et al. (2008) Estimation of the global burden of snakebite. PLoS Med 5(11): e218. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050218

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