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The lottery of the snakebite antivenom industry
Investigation reveals ineffective products being sold across Africa, with poor regulation and shortage of effective medication leading to needless deaths
The first snakebite antivenom was made in the mid-1890s and the method has changed little since: snakes are “milked” for their venom, which is injected into horses or sheep and the antibodies that their immune systems then produce are extracted via the animals’ blood. Dr Nicholas Amani Hamman, medical director of Nigeria’s Snakebite hospital and research centre recalls watching a four-year-old boy die last year, while waiting for a second dose of antivenom that didn’t arrive in time. A few hours’ drive north, Prof Abdulrazaq Habib at the Nigerian Snakebite Research and Intervention Centre, knows that when antivenom is out of stock and he writes a prescription for patients to take to a pharmacy, it is a gamble.
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