By MALUM NALU
PAPUA New Guinea can greatly reduce the high cost of snake anti-venom by switching to manufacturers in Asia or Central America, according to snake expert Dr David Williams.
Currently, the PNG Health Department pays K4,500 for a small vial of anti-venom but this can be reduced to less than K500.
“We hope that by switching to a manufacturer operating in Asia or Central America, we can reduce the final cost of anti-venom from the present K4,500 for Australian-made anti-venom to less than K500,” Dr Williams told The National.
“This is not a difficult proposition.
“There are already countries in Africa having anti-venom made for them in Central America at a cost of less than US$50 (K147) per vial.
“We have already submitted a detailed plan to the Health Department in relation to rationalising and improving anti-venom warehousing and distribution, by combining these functions with our epidemiological surveillance, and effectively removing the task of anti-venom distribution from the medical stores to a unit that we would run from the UPNG Medical School.
“This new anti-venom distribution facility would be accessible to dispense anti-venoms to hospitals and health centres 365 days a year, 24 hours every day.
“By matching distribution to the information we have on snake bite incidence, we could vastly improve service delivery, and more importantly stamp out the current problems of anti-venom theft and resale through the introduction of a range of measures for tracking individual vials of anti-venom.”
Snake venoms are mixed in a special emulsion and injected in tiny amounts into host animals such as horses.
Over several months the doses are gradually increased and these horses produce antibodies in their blood which neutralise the venom, so that eventually they can survive doses that would normally kill many horses.
When there are high enough antibody levels present, blood is taken from the horses and the antibodies for the snake venom are purified from it.
These antibodies go through several laboratory processes to ensure that they are safe for human use, and eventually are packaged in vials for use in the treatment of snake bite.
The technology was first developed in France more than 110 years ago, and remains relatively unchanged.
“Many developing countries produce their own anti-venom, and I believe that Papua New Guinea can also eventually do the same thing once the capacity has been built and personnel have been trained to do the work,” Dr Williams said.