NHRC Issues Notices To Centre & Odisha Govt Over Snakebite Fatalities

Bhubaneswar: The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the Centre as well as the Odisha government over the rise in snakebite deaths and absence of measures to reduce such fatalities.

Taking cognisance of a petition filed by civil rights lawyer Radhakanta Tripathy, the Commission sought replies from the authorities concerned within six weeks.

The petition contended that snakebite deaths alone accounted for more than 40 per cent of the total disaster deaths with the cases more than doubled to 1,159 in 2021 from 522 in 2015 mainly due to shortage of anti-snake venom drugs stocks in the government-run health facilities, including SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. The anti-venom drugs are also not readily available in the open market in the state, it said.

It claimed that on an average 58,000 deaths occur per year in India due to snakebite, of which 70 per cent in low-altitude areas of nine states, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Stating that India is drastically affected by snakebite and accounts for almost half the total number of annual deaths in the world, the petition said considering all these facts, the World Health Organization (WHO) has included the snakebite envenoming as a neglected tropical disease. The WHO has launched a strategy in 2019 for preventing and controlling snakebites.