South African snake experts and others say the country’s shortage of snake antivenom has been a major health risk since the end of last year, although authorities deny there is a problem.
“It is available in the country,” said the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), a government body in charge of antidote production. But experts disagree, reports News24.
In April, a group of snakebite treatment specialists pleaded with the Health Minister to take action over the matter, and while supply problems have eased slightly in some quarters, vets say they are still struggling.
Hospitals treating humans get priority when any new doses are available, said Johan Marais, a herpetologist who heads the African Snakebite Institute.
“At the moment, if you’re a veterinarian, you cannot get antivenom,” he said, adding that he receives up to a dozen calls a day from desperate animal doctors and dog owners looking for antidotes.
Alan Kloeck of the South African Veterinary Association confirmed this, describing a countrywide shortage with vets unable to get their hands on the antiserum they needed.
South African Vaccine Producers, which is an NHLS subsidiary and the only antivenom maker in the country, produces two antidotes.
One can treat bites from 10 snakes, including the Cape cobra, the puffadder and the green mamba, while another is for relatively rare boomslang bites.
Mike Perry of African Reptiles and Venom, a venom-extraction firm in Centurion that houses around 900 snakes in small glass cages, said making the venom was a laborious process.
His team forces the hissing reptiles to spit out their poison by making them bite a glass jar. Small quantities of the toxins are then injected into horses, which over time develop immunity.
Their plasma is then harvested and processed to make the serum.
But that process requires constant refrigeration, and the production backlog has been blamed in large part on the energy crisis and the constant power blackouts.
In April, the NHLS said it required a consistent and dependable power supply to produce antivenom.
The continuous switchover to generators during outages interrupted production and affected stockpiles, it said, forcing it to invest in backup power systems and renewable energy.
Last week, the NHLS said it had increased manufacturing and since January, had delivered antivenom to more than 230 institutions, including hospitals and veterinary clinics, fulfilling all orders apart from “a small backlog” affecting a provincial depot.
News24 article – Dogs die as SA's snake antivenom shortage bites (Open access)
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