Bhubaneswar: In a first-of-its-kind study, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is undertaking a study on the incidence, mortality, morbidity and socio-economic burden of snakebite in the country, according to an IANS report.
The study will cover 13 states, including Odisha. The other states are Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Tripura.
An article on the study ‘ICMR task force project, survey of the incidence, mortality, morbidity and socio-economic burden of snakebite in India: A study protocol’ was published in international research journal Plos One on August 22.
The study’s national principal investigator is Jaideep C Menon from Preventive Cardiology and Population Health Sciences, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Kochi. Omesh Bharti, epidemiologist with the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Himachal Pradesh, is the national principal co-investigator.
“This study will generate real data on snakebite incidence, mortality, morbidity and socio-economic burden of snakebite for the first time in the country to help the decision makers in policy framing to prevent and control snakebite in India. The country still doesn’t know the real snakebite burden and is hence groping in the dark when it comes to policy,” Bharti told IANS on Tuesday.
“It is the first such study in South East Asia. Sri Lanka has done it, but they covered a population of one per cent only, whereas our study would cover a population of 6.12 per cent,” Bharti told IANS.
According to the article, snakebite is possibly the most neglected of NTDs (neglected tropical diseases).
Half of the global deaths due to venomous snakebites, estimated at one lakh per year, occur in India. Annually, 4.5 million to 5.4 million snakebite cases are reported; two million of them in India.
