Myanmar farmers are trapped in a vicious cycle that leaves them especially vulnerable to snake bites. Rice attracts rodents, and rodents attract snakes; and if a snake bites a farmer, chances are that farmer has neither the money nor the means of transportation to ensure her own survival. The cost of survival is sure to deepen her poverty and dependence on farming.
As much as 60 percent of Myanmar’s population is economically dependent on farming, so a similar proportion is at greater risk in the case of a snake bite than the urban population. The result is that Myanmar sees around 13,000 snake bite cases and 600 deaths every year, at least according to official figures.
Luckily, the Australian government is funding a team of specialists to work with Myanmar’s ministries of industry and health to bring those numbers down. The
For the team, improving Myanmar’s anti-venom infrastructure goes beyond just preventing deaths. When a snake bite victim in Myanmar does not die, he still must endure a long hospitalization, crushing medical bills and transport expenses.
“When we started working three years ago on this issue, we came to know that the snake bite for rural [people] and the farmer has a huge family economic burden,” team member Dr. Afzal Mahmood told Nikkei Asian Review. “Everything adds up, [and] people go further into poverty with these public health issues.”
The team’s work includes training Myanmar health professionals to prevent kidney failure in snake bite victims – one of the common consequences of a bite from the Russell’s viper, which is found in rural Myanmar.
“Something like 70 percent of patients with acute kidney failure in [Myanmar] [have suffered] a snake bite. It is an enormous problem,” said Dr. Chen Au Peh, a renal specialist who leads the team.
The Australian team is also training potential first responders in Myanmar to carry out first aid properly.
They are also designing standard operating procedures for the Mandalay General Hospital, which treats hundreds of snake bites every year. The aim is to get anti-venom to victims more quickly than is now possible.
“Six or seven miles of dirt road, with lots of holes, will take several hours to travel. So all these factors accumulate to a long delay between bite and the administration of anti-venom,” Dr. Peh told Nikkei Asian Review.
To shorten the period between bite and treatment, Australia has supplied 30 solar-powered refrigerators to areas with a high frequency of snake bites and poor electrical supply. This will allow anti-venom to be stored closer to where potential snake bite victims live.
The team has also brought up local production of anti-venom from 60,000 vials per year to 100,000 by helping to prevent infections in horses that are used to produce the anti-venom.
The team’s ultimate goal, though, is to ensure that its local counterparts continue using these best practices after the four-year program ends.
