The world could be facing a health crisis as Doctors Without Borders warned that the remaining stockpile of effective anti-venom will expire in June of next year.
According to members of the international organization, the lack of anti-venom can lead to thousands of cases of deaths and disabilities, the Washington Post reported.
Snakebites are considered as one of the top health emergencies in the world with a record reaching up to five million cases each year. As noted by Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, about 100,000 people die annually after being bitten by snakes.
Another 400,000 are left permanently disabled due to amputation procedures in order to prevent the venom from reaching the vital organs.
"Snakebite is a major killer yet remains one of the world's most neglected health emergencies as global health actors show worryingly little interest in the issue," Doctors Without Borders said in a statement according to the Daily Times Gazette.
Currently, the only safe and proven effective anti-venom treatment is called Fav-Afrique, which is produced by France-based pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur. However, the company has stopped producing the product in 2014 and that last batch it made is set to expire less than a year from now.
According to a report by Reuters, the company decided to stop making anti-venom due to the competition with other firms. Since these companies are able to produce and sell cheaper anti-venoms, Sanofi Pasteur's sales dropped.
"The same technology is used to produced rabies anti-serum which is a constant demand and has very few producers," Alain Bernal, the vice president of Sanofi Pasteur told The Independent.
"We went for that," the executive added. "We are a private company, the research we do we self-finance. If we don't make some profit we can't research. We need money."
Although they're cheaper, the anti-venom created by other companies are often less effective than the Fav-Afrique.
Despite dropping out of the market, a spokesperson from Sanofri Pasteur said that the company is working with other pharmaceutical firms to share the process and technology involved in making the anti-venom. However, it could take at least up to two years before a new batch is released.
Fav-Afrique plays an important factor in treating snakebites because it is known to counteract the venom 10 species of deadly snakes commonly found in Africa and Asia. These include those from the families Viperidea and Elapidae.
Usually, this treatment costs somewhere between $250 and $500. Through donors and international aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders, anti-venoms are delivered and administered to snakebite victims in developing countries for free.
