“When a doctor in a developing nation sees a patient with an infection, it's an easy choice to prescribe an antibiotic,” says Ana Padilla, a technical advisor at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. “But when a patient shows up with a snake bite, most doctors won't know which antivenom to give or how to administer it—and even if they did, they probably don't have it or know where to get it.”

Because of this knowledge gap, Padilla says, at least 100,000 people die each year from snake bites, and 300,000 more suffer debilitating injuries. In early May, the WHO launched a new website (http://www.who.int/bloodproducts/snake_antivenoms/) aimed at filling that gap.

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The result of two years' worth of information gathering, the site hosts a growing list of more than 200 venomous snake descriptions, maps showing the areas they inhabit and any known antivenoms, along with the companies that produce them. The idea is that charities, medical organizations and governments will use the information to help ensure that needed antivenoms are produced and distributed to the proper areas.

But Padilla admits that it's going to be an uphill battle. Antivenoms are expensive to produce. The lengthy process involves exposing an animal (typically a horse) to venom and then refining the animal's resulting blood-borne antibodies into a serum. Single doses can cost hundreds of dollars but only have a shelf life of around two years.

The production process is usually not closely monitored, especially in the areas that need the venom most: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The animal proteins in the serum can often cause an allergic reaction, says Scott Pfaff, a venom expert and curator of herpetology at the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina.

“You have to know what you're doing when you're delivering the stuff, because the antivenom might do a better job of injuring the patient than the venom,” Pfaff says. Any antivenom imported into the US is considered an Investigational New Drug by the Food and Drug Administration—a designation that may be appropriate, Pfaff says, as there's often a question as to the antivenom's active ingredients.

Additionally, many commercial producers of antivenoms have halted production because there simply aren't enough snake bites to make a profit. For example, there may no longer be adequate supplies of coral snake antivenom in the US later this year because of a halt from its primary producer, Wyeth, in 2003. This means that the WHO's new initiative will probably be largely reliant upon nonprofit organizations to produce the serums, Padilla says.