Experts and campaigners blame a combination of weak production capacity, feeble policy and oversight, high prices and a general lack of concern for the plight of people in poor, remote areas of the world.
WATAMU - Snake antivenoms have been around for 125 years, are effective and can be produced cheaply at scale. Yet Africa, with its abundance of deadly snakes, has an alarming shortage of the life-saving medicine.The method of antivenom production has changed very little since it was first developed by French immunologist Albert Calmette in the late 19th century. It remains a painstaking, time-consuming process, although researchers are working to develop synthetic alternatives.
After several doses over a period of about a year, the horse produces so many antibodies that it becomes immune to the venom, at which point blood can be taken from the animal. Even an antivenom produced on the continent and effective against multiple snake species, is nigh impossible to find further north than South Africa, where it is made, a 2018 study by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine found.
Doctors Without Borders, which describes Africa's antivenom shortage as a public health crisis, has launched its own survey of available antivenoms.
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