Quest for a better snakebite treatment gets $102-million funding boost

WHO is due later this month to publish a "Snakebite Roadmap" that will aim to halve deaths and disability from snakebites by 2030

A global health trust is to inject 80 million pounds ($102 million) into finding more modern and effective treatments for snakebites - a “hidden health crisis” that kills 120,000 people a year and maims thousands more.
 

The project, launched by Britain’s Wellcome Trust global health charity on Thursday, aims both to improve the world’s supply of antivenoms - the only current treatment for snakebites - and to develop new and more effective drugs for the future.

“Snakebite treatment is essentially reliant on a 100-year-old process,” said David Lalloo, a professor and director of Britain’s Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

A dire lack