Slip sliding away: venom extraction in Tamil Nadu

Slip sliding away: venom extraction in Tamil Nadu

In Tamil Nadu, a unique group of tribals — the Irula — makes its living by catching snakes and rodents. Two members of this community were recognised only last year with the Padma Shri award. This tribe is the driving force behind a unique endeavour in the State: snake venom extraction. In changing times, when automation and cruelty-free testing have become the norm, the Irula Snake Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society, a one-of-its-kind collective at Vada Nemmeli in Kancheepuram, is on the cusp of changes that the Irulas are unprepared for.

Snakebite envenoming, a life-threatening disease caused by the toxins in a venomous snake’s bite, is primarily a ‘poor man’s disease’, mainly afflicting farmers, labourers, and tribals. It is a mounting public health concern, occurring mostly in rural areas. India has one of the highest number of snakebite deaths, averaging over 50,000 a year. The society, being run under the Department of Industries and Commerce, meets over 80% of the country’s venom requirements. As many as 350 Irulas are engaged in catching the ‘big four’ snakes (Russell’s viper, saw-scaled viper, common krait and spectacled cobra) from farmland in and around Kancheepuram, Chengalpattu, and Tiruvallur. Once the snakes pass a ‘health check’, the Irulas extract venom three to four times from each snake before releasing it back into the wild at the end of 21 days. The Forest Department decides the number of snakes to be caught a year, depending on venom stocks. Pharmaceutical companies buy the venom from the society to make anti-snake venom serum. The collective is staring at uncertainty because of a dated venom extraction method, requirements for region-specific anti-snake venom in the country, and scientific advances in the production of anti-snake venom serum.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed snakebite envenoming as the ‘highest priority neglected tropical disease’. The same year, it established a snakebite envenoming working group to develop a strategic WHO road map for a 50% reduction in mortality and disability caused by snakebite envenoming by 2030.

A study, published in eLife, estimated an average of 58,000 snakebite deaths a year in India. It analysed the trends in snakebite deaths using the Indian Million Death Study from 2001 to 2014, and a systematic literature review from 2000 to 2019 covering 87,590 snakebites. The research also showed a huge discrepancy between the number of deaths reported by public hospitals and the estimates from the Million Death Study.

For instance, Tamil Nadu reported 500 snakebite deaths from 2003 to 2015, as published by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The Million Death Study, however, put the total number of deaths at 36,000, with 10,000 estimated deaths in hospitals. This means that the government covered a mere 5% in its reporting.

According to experts, poor documentation of the number of snakebites and deaths by the States is responsible for the gap in the availability of anti-snake venom and the demand.

In a 2012 article published in Current Science, herpetologists Romulus Whitaker and Samir Whitaker noted that the standards of venom production and protocols of the cooperative society have considerable scope for improvement in conformity with WHO guidelines. They wrote, “To achieve the previous point, it is suggested that India’s largest venom producer, the ISCICS [Irula Snake Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society], be reconstituted as a multi-State cooperative under the Central government so that snake venom for the production of anti-venom can be collected from as wide a geographic area as possible in recognition of the fact that there is considerable regional variation in the composition of venoms and that there are species other than the ‘big four’ responsible for serious bites.”