KARACHI: As media reports about increasing snakebite cases with the start of summer have started to pour in from the rural parts of Sindh, especially Tharparkar, the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) held a press briefing on Thursday to share the progress of its anti-snake venom project with journalists.

The briefing was organised at the Dow Medical College.

“All relevant documents will be submitted to the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) by the end of this month and we are hoping to get permission for clinical trials within three months. The trials will be conducted in Umerkot, part of Tharparkar district, which sees a lot of snakebite cases during this time of the year,” said DUHS vice chancellor Prof Masood Hameed Khan.

The vaccine had already successfully completed trials on animals, he added.

Unlike the liquid imported vaccine, the DUHS vaccine will be in powdered form so that its quality is not affected by temperature variation. The polyvalent vaccine (active against several toxins) will be at a low cost of Rs600 per vial as compared to the imported ones, which cost around Rs1,500 per vial.

Highlighting some important benefits of the vaccine developed at the university, Dr Zameer Ahmed, who has been leading the project since its start, said it would be more effective than the vaccines currently being imported from India and Saudi Arabia as they provided partial effectiveness.

“Our vaccine has been prepared with the help of venoms produced by local snake species. The case of imported vaccines, however, is different since every country utilises its own natural resources. This makes imported vaccines less effective in our region and one has to use them in large quantities against a venom.

“There are some snake species which are endemic to Pakistan, for instance the leaf-nose viper found in Balochistan, while our Krait snake family is different from the one inhabiting India. Saudi Arabia doesn’t have Krait species at all,” he said.

20,000 people die of snakebite

According to experts, around 50,000 cases of snakebite occur every year in Pakistan whereas 20,000 people die of snakebites annually. The locally produced vaccine (30,000 vials per year) by the National Institute of Health (NIH) doesn’t meet the local needs. Each year, 45,000 vials are imported at a cost of Rs6.75m, though its specificity is unknown.

“There is a dire need to make safe, effective and economical anti-snake venom available in remote areas where snakebite is a major problem,” Dr Ahmed said.

Tracing the project’s history, he said it took off with a pair of mice, rats and rabbits in a renovated facility at the DUHS Ojha campus in 2009. With the successful breeding of these animals, the facility had supplied these species at subsidised rates to research institutions and had earned Rs3m so far.

Explaining the process of preparing anti-snake venom, Dr Ahmed said that venom is injected in small doses into a horse. The animal does not die but instead produces antibodies against the venom in eight to 10 months. The immunised response is later extracted from the animal’s blood and purified.

Answering to a question, Prof Khan admitted that the project got delayed by at least three years, mainly on account of setting up a state-of-the-art multi-disciplinary laboratory at the university, as required by DRAP.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2016