Australia deserves praise for snakebite help

A new partnership to improve access to snake antivenom announced this week is the answer to the prayers of medical officers who deal with snakebite victims.
Called the PNG Snakebite Partnership, it is a three-year project involving the National Department of Health, the Australian Government, Australian company Seqirus Pty Ltd, and the Charles Campbell Toxinology Centre (CCTC) at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG).
Through the trust, there will be an annual donation of 600 vials of snake and marine creature anti-venom to Papua New Guinea.
This is more than triple the amount of antivenom currently purchased annually by the Health Department. The donation is valued at more than K2.5 million annually. Some may disagree, but it is comforting news to know the Australian Government will support the management of the antivenom and the training of health workers on snakebite management through a K1.1 million contribution.
This will be delivered by the CCTC, a collaborative partnership between the UPNG and the University of Melbourne.
CCTC operates the snakebite clinic at Port Moresby General Hospital and will offer two new postgraduate Master of Medical Science scholarships to UPNG students as part of a move for the comprehensive monitoring and evaluation services and the training of health workers under the project.
The CCTC must be commended for its tireless effort in providing hundreds of vials of antivenom to patients at PMGH, and at no time have they ever charged for it.
They also operate the Snakebite Clinic at the Emergency Department of Port Moresby General Hospital, and a Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance Service specifically set up to enable them to send specialist medical teams to safely retrieve the most seriously ill snakebite victims from outlying rural areas in Central.
The reality is that snakebite is a plague of the developing world that has received very little recognition even though it causes more than 125,000 deaths and leaves more than 400,000 survivors annually with permanent disabilities, amputations and psychological trauma, around the world.
Here in PNG, snakebites inflict the most unfortunate, the underprivileged and socio-economically disadvantaged populations – the rural subsistence farmers – who make up over 85 per cent of the population in PNG.
The World Health Organisation on June 9 last year formally recognised snakebite as a Category A neglected tropical disease.
One would wonder why people die from snakebite.
The main reason many will say is that there is no political and financial priority towards improving the plight of snakebite victims.
This then has translated into inadequate funding, poor capacity building, minimal resource allocation and scanty research in the area of snakebite.
Australia should be applauded for coming into partnership to address this area of concern.
While Australia is only a few hundred kilometres away from PNG, the state of health in these two countries are poles apart.
Both share similar species of venomous snakes, but Australia manages the risk well.
Hundreds of men, women and children die in this country because of the political and financial neglect of one of the most-neglected tropical threats.
This partnership now throws in a new twist which is the diversion of funds and resources to where the problem is.
The partnership news marks a new and bright beginning for snakebite victims and for people who have tirelessly worked in this field to bring it to the attention of governments and donors.