Bangkok Poison Center Handles 1,500 Snakebite Calls a Year, Up from 1,000 Average

The Ramathibodi Poison Center in Bangkok fields roughly 130 emergency hotline calls every day. By 11 a.m. on a humid Thursday morning, staff had already answered 42 calls, several of them from physicians seeking guidance on snakebite treatment.

Grist reported that the center, established in 1996, now receives about 1,500 snakebite-related calls per year, up from an average of 1,000. More than half concern venomous species. Calls peak during the rainy season when floods push snakes into human areas.

Dr. Satariya Trakulsrichai, head of the poison center, said the facility has operated continuously for 30 years. It also runs an outpatient clinic for snakebite patients every Friday. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes each year worldwide.

Half develop envenoming, approximately 500,000 suffer permanent disabilities, and 138,000 die. Up to 2 million envenomings occur annually in Asia. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates roughly 7,000 snakebites per year, with five deaths.

Research at Emory University found that the likelihood of snakebite rises with each degree Celsius increase in daily temperatures. New snake species are appearing in Thailand and other countries. The brown spotted pit viper, once limited to China, Taiwan, and India, is now recorded in Thailand.

Additional hotspots have emerged in Niger, Namibia, Nepal, and Myanmar.