Telangana: FOSS welcomes MoHFW decision to mandate reporting of snake bites in all health facilities

For the past year or so, the FOSS has been advocating the need to make notification of snake bites mandatory. “By rough estimates, we can say that there are 66,000 snake bite cases annually in India. But we do not have any concrete idea of the exact prevalence of snake bite cases in each State,” says FOSS Secretary Avinash

Hyderabad: A key stakeholder in the conservation of snakes as a species and prevention of snakebite related deaths in Telangana, the Friends of Snakes Society (FOSS) on Thursday welcomed the Union Health Ministry decision to make reporting of snake bites mandatory for all healthcare facilities.

“If you want to prevent snake bites, then you must know how many snake bites are happening in each State and in the country. The reporting system of snake bites is absolutely poor in the country. We simply can’t make an educated guess on how many snake bite cases we are dealing with every year in Telangana,” says Secretary, FOSS, Avinash Visvanathan.

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For the past year or so, the FOSS has been advocating the need to make notification of snake bites mandatory. “By rough estimates, we can say that there are 66,000 snake bite cases annually in India. But we do not have any concrete idea of the exact prevalence of snake bite cases in each State,” says Avinash.

He points out that mandatory notification of snake bites means all hospitals (private and government) including teaching hospitals must report/ notify the case in a prescribed format to the local District Medical and Health Officers.

Mandatory notification is the first big step towards the objective of reducing snake bite related deaths to half by 2030.

“With due consultations with stakeholders like us, the Union Health Ministry has launched National Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming from India by 2030″ (NAPSE).

Under NAPSE, we must reduce snake bite deaths but first we must know the gravity of the situation. For that, mandatory reporting of snake bites is the first step,” Avinash added.