Cases of snake bites is up alarmingly up in Assam. During the recent floods and the ongoing monsoon season, several cases of snake bites and deaths have been reported across the state.
Highlighting this, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Assam unit on Sunday stressed on arrangements of anti-venom and emergency rooms for cases related to snake bites.
In a statement to the media, Assam Trinamool Congress Media President Dilip Kumar Sarma urged the Assam government to set up anti-venom and emergency rooms in all government hospitals to assist patients bitten by venomous snakes.
Sarma also highlighted a snake bite incident in Assam’s Baksa district where a girl succumbed to a snake bite, of late.
Dilip Kumar Sarma further suggested the Assam government to direct the private hospitals in the state to make arrangements for the same.
A new groundbreaking study undertaken by a team of Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST) scientists and clinicians from Demow Community Health Centre in Assam shed light on the frightening scope of the snakebite epidemic in Assam, India's biodiversity hotspot. Snakebite, a neglected tropical disease (NTD), disproportionately affects marginalised groups in impoverished rural settings with inadequate access to healthcare.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the published figure of around 5.4 million snakebites worldwide each year severely understates the true size of the problem in the Indian subcontinent, notably in Assam. The Indian monocled cobra, banded krait, bigger black krait, lesser black krait, king cobra, green pit viper, and Salazar's pit viper are among the venomous snakes found in the region. Unfortunately, the scarcity of trustworthy snakebite data makes efficient public health planning and resource allocation difficult.
