Guidelines for the Clinical Management of Snake bites in the South-East Asia Region

Overview

The geographical area specifically covered by this publication extends from Pakistan and the rest of the Indian subcontinent in the west through to the Philippines and Indonesia in the east, excluding Tibet, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, the eastern islands of Indonesia and New Guinea and Australia.

In many parts of this region, snake bite is a familiar occupational hazard of farmers, plantation workers and others, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths each year and innumerable cases of chronic physical handicap. Much is now known about the species of venomous snakes responsible for these bites, the nature of their venoms and the clinical effects of envenoming in human patients. This publication aims to pass on a digest of this knowledge to medical doctors, nurses, dispensers and community health workers who have the responsibility of treating victims of snake bite.

The guidelines are intended to provide enough practical information to allow any medicallytrained person to assess and treat a patient with snake bite at different levels of the health service. Recommendations are based on clinical experience and, where possible, on the results of clinical trials. The restrictions on the size of this document prevented the inclusion of detailed references to the original publications on which these recommendations were based. These can be found in the papers and reviews listed in “Further Reading”.