Anti-venom crisis won’t affect SA
SOUTH Africa should be shielded from a potential snake venom shortage in the rest of Africa once the last supplies of an all-purpose anti-venom made in France expire.
Megan Saffer, managing director of South African Vaccine Producers, said the company was still producing anti-venom, and “we have capacity to increase production if required.”
Alarm bells rang following an article in The Daily Maverick warning that all remaining stocks of the all-purpose FAV-Afrique would expire at the end of June and no one was making any new supplies.
Mike Perry, whose Gauteng business, African Reptiles and Venom, keeps 600 venomous snakes which are milked for their venom, said FAV-Afrique was used mainly in the French regions of west Africa.
“The reason the French stopped producing it was that in around 2000 a company in India started copying the French product,” he said. “They contacted me, asking me to supply venom from the saw-scaled viper, which causes the most bites and deaths in West Africa but I said it would be too expensive. They then decided to use venom from Indian snakes, which was useless as an anti-venom.
“The death rate went up from 1 percent of bites to 12 to 15 percent.”
Saffer said the South African Vaccine Producers had always supplied the African market, adding that there was “no reason for alarm”.
She was unable to offer statistics on the demand. “Snake bite is not a notifiable condition, hence accurate statistics are not available,” she said.
Local snake catcher Jason Arnold said anti-venom was generally available but sometimes not at the medical facilities where people with snakebite wounds were treated.