Preliminary findings of research for a better understanding of the burden of snakebite poisoning in Ghana show that from 2015 to 2019, Ghana recorded an average of 9,600 snakebites every year.
Although it is not known how many of these bites resulted in deaths, persons between the ages 20 and 34 years suffer the most bites.
The average number of bites per year show that the Upper West Region had the highest of 1,425 bites followed by Ashanti Region with 1,161 bites, Eastern Region with 987 bites, Central Region with 897 bites and Northern Region recording 799 bites
Dr John H. Amuasi, Executive Director, of the African Research Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases made this known at a media briefing ahead of World Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Day which falls on January 30.
He said the World Health Organization (WHO) had included snakebite envenoming in the NTDs as it results in enormous suffering, disability and premature death on every continent.
According to him, in 2019, for the first time in five years, the Ashanti Region recorded the highest number of 1,535 bites.
Dr Amuasi indicated that when the population size of each region is taken into consideration, “even in 2019, we calculated 114 bites for every 100,000 persons in the Upper West Region followed by the Savannah with 103 for every 100,000 persons while the North East and the Western North regions tied at 64 for every 100,000 persons.”
The research, Dr Amuasi said, was a collaboration between the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research Group of the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR), based at the Kwame Nkrumah School of Public Health and the Ghana Health Service.
The work done so far has made use of data from Ghana’s District Health Information Management System (DHIMS) and other sources, hence these figures are not likely to provide the actual incidence and distribution of snakebites in the country because they rely on only figures recorded at government health facilities
