Over the past month, as part of our research into the healthcare sector, we have travelled to several Tier 2 & 3 towns in northern India. There, to our surprise, we found not just crumbling public health infrastructure (which creates obvious opportunities for competent vendors from the private sector) but also a massive market for faith healers, quacks and other local jadoo-tona merchants who peddle spurious medicines and random mumbo-jumbo masquerading as healthcare. Antara Baruah’s article in The Print highlights that one consequence of this medieval state of affairs across much of India is that snakebites kill more Indians than the standard diseases which form part of drawing room conversations in the more pleasant enclaves of urban India. The numbers she punches out in her article are staggering:
“More Indians die from snakebites than from all other wildlife encounters combined, and the death toll surpasses that of dengue and malaria deaths, which receive mission-mode attention from the government. BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy reported in Parliament last week that as many as 50,000 people die each year from snakebites, though surveys suggest the number is closer to 58,000.
The issue rarely makes headlines despite India being the worst-affected country in the world. Data from a 2020 national mortality study shows that 94 per cent of snakebites occur in rural areas, and 77 per cent of the deaths happen outside hospitals….
According to a 2019 study published in the National Library of Medicine, 97 per cent of snakebite deaths in India occur in rural areas…..
It is a story wrapped up in mythology, superstition, and abysmal public health infrastructure. Primary health care centres are just not equipped with the necessary resources or trained doctors to treat snakebites in time.”
Ms Baruah then gives an anecdote from Ghaziabad, a town adjacent to Delhi (where one would healthcare infrastructure would be half decent at least):
“When Subodh’s mother was bitten by a snake, slim and barely a foot long, his first instinct wasn’t to take her to a hospital. Instead, he rushed her to a faith healer in Murad Nagar, where her wrist was stroked with a stick—even though the bite was on her foot.
“We don’t trust hospitals. We trust healers, herbs, and Ayurveda,” he said while managing his corner store in Morta, a village in Ghaziabad’s Raj Nagar extension….
Subodh’s mother survived the bite—it was a non-venomous snake—but the family credits her recovery to the faith healer.
“A snake is a snake, regardless of the amount of poison. Whether it’s small or big, the effect is the same,” declared Subodh.”
So, to the extent to India needs to know, what is the Government doing about this? A fair bit it appears but with limited success in curtailing the death rate because superstition is still all pervasive:
“Earlier this year, the government launched the National Action for Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming, aiming to cut the mortality rate in half by 2030. The deadline is ambitious, according to Dr Priyanka Kadam, founder of the Snakebite Healing and Education Society. The Union Health Ministry also introduced a snakebite helpline to provide “immediate assistance, guidance, and support” to victims.
However, these policy changes have done little to significantly impact mortality rates, while states continue to disburse substantial compensation—Madhya Pradesh alone paid out Rs 231.16 crore between 2020 and 2022.
A roadblock in policy implementation is the place snakes occupy in myths and popular culture, nudging people toward healers instead of doctors. Socially validated superstitions, such as snakes seeking revenge or residing in nightmares, further drive people away from medical treatment.
It’s not a shortage of anti-venom, but kinks in distribution networks and overworked staff at community health centres that have led to a system that cannot cope, said Kadam. There needs to be a neater, more efficient way to procure anti-venom. According to government data from 2015, treatment at hospitals was sought within 4 hours of the bite in 55.69 per cent of cases. While patients were frightened, “no local or systemic symptoms” had appeared.
“India is a country of belief systems. We come across many educated people who think the solution is faith healing,” said Dr Kadam. “If people are able to identify snakes, half the job would be done.””
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