Green medicine as a harmonizing tool to antivenom therapy for the clinical management of snakebite: The road ahead

Snakebite is declared as a “Neglected Tropical Disease” by the World Health Organization. As a result, this may be considered as a matter of global health concern for the people in general and the rural communities of the developing countries in particular. The reasons for the dearth of true statistical data on epidemiology of snakebite, particularly from some of these countries are mainly due to the lack of properly co-ordinated epidemiological survey programme. Therefore, the published data on snakebite based on hospital records were biased and did not reflect the true magnitude of the problem. Snakebite data based on diverse methodologies show that global incidence of snakebite is around 5,400,000 bites per year leading to over 2,500,000 envenoming and around 125,000 fatal cases annually1. As a result, snake envenomation warrants urgent medical attention and must be considered as a severe health issue.