Global mortality of snakebite envenoming between 1990 and 2019
GBD 2019 Snakebite Envenomation Collaborators, Nicholas L S Roberts, Emily K. Johnson, Scott Zeng, Erin B Hamilton, Amir Abdoli, Fares Alahdab, Vahid Alipour, Robert Ancuceanu, Cătălina Liliana Andrei, Davood Anvari, Jalal Arabloo, Marcel Ausloos, Atalel Fentahun Awedew, Ashish Badiye, Shankar M Bakkannavar, Ashish Bhalla, Nikha Bhardwaj, Pankaj Bhardwaj, Soumyadeep Bhaumik, Ali Bijani, Archith Boloor, Tianji Cai, Félix Carvalho, Dinh‐Toi Chu, Rosa A S Couto, Xiaochen Dai, Abebaw Alemayehu Desta, Hoa Do, Lucas Earl, Aziz Eftekhari, Firooz Esmaeilzadeh, Farshad Farzadfar, Eduarda Fernandes, Irina Filip, Masoud Foroutan, Richard C. Franklin, Abhay Gaidhane, Birhan Gebresillassie Gebregiorgis, Berhe Gebremichael, Ahmad Ghashghaee, Mahaveer Golechha, Samer Hamidi, Syed Emdadul Haque, Khezar Hayat, Claudiu Herţeliu, Olayinka Stephen Ilesanmi, M. Mofizul Islam, Jagnoor Jagnoor, Tanuj Kanchan, Neeti Kapoor, Ejaz Ahmad Khan, Mahalaqua Nazli Khatib, Roba Khundkar, Kewal Krishan, G Anil Kumar, Nithin Kumar, Iván Landires, Stephen S Lim, Mohammed Madadin, Venkatesh Maled, Navid Manafi, Laurie B. Marczak, Ritesh G. Menezes, Tuomo J Meretoja, Ted R. Miller, Abdollah Mohammadian-Hafshejani, Ali H. Mokdad, Francis N.P. Monteiro, Maryam Moradi, Vinod C Nayak, Cuong Tat Nguyen, Huong Lan Thi Nguyen, Virginia Núñez-Samudio, Samuel M Ostroff, Jagadish Rao Padubidri, Hai Quang Pham, Marina Pinheiro, Majid Pirestani, Quazi Syed Zahiruddin, Navid Rabiee, Amir Radfar, Vafa Rahimi‐Movaghar, Sowmya J Rao, Prateek Rastogi, David Laith Rawaf, Salman Rawaf, Robert C. Reiner, Amirhossein Sahebkar, Abdallah M Samy, Monika Sawhney, David C. Schwebel, Subramanian Senthilkumaran, Masood Ali Shaikh, Valentin Yurievich Skryabin, Anna Aleksandrovna Skryabina, Amin Soheili, Mark A. Stokes, Rekha Thapar, Marcos Roberto Tovani‐Palone
Abstract
Snakebite envenoming is an important cause of preventable death. The World Health Organization (WHO) set a goal to halve snakebite mortality by 2030. We used verbal autopsy and vital registration data to model the proportion of venomous animal deaths due to snakes by location, age, year, and sex, and applied these proportions to venomous animal contact mortality estimates from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study. In 2019, 63,400 people (95% uncertainty interval 38,900-78,600) died globally from snakebites, which was equal to an age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) of 0.8 deaths (0.5-1.0) per 100,000 and represents a 36% (2-49) decrease in ASMR since 1990. India had the greatest number of deaths in 2019, equal to an ASMR of 4.0 per 100,000 (2.3-5.0). We forecast mortality will continue to decline, but not sufficiently to meet WHO's goals. Improved data collection should be prioritized to help target interventions, improve burden estimation, and monitor progress.