Save Lives of Snakebite Victims in Rural India

In an effort to motivate the herpetologists and other professional snake rescuers, TIES is extending support to them by providing snake rescue kits through Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department. Initially, TIES along with Kerala Forest and Wildlife Department will provide rescue kits to the rescuers of the Kottayam district in Kerala State and on a later phase we will be covering the entire state and other areas. In the initial stage, TIES will be distributing 25 snake rescue kits in the Kottayam district. The rescue kit consists of two stainless steel snake hooks with teak handles (large and small), two cotton snake carry bags, a carry case, and a stainless steel bagging frame.

An ethical rescue kit will help rescuers in their endeavour to rescue snakes. Supporting them will encourage other youngsters and other nature enthusiasts to rescue snakes professionally without harming them. This will help to improve their expertise and motivate them.

Public awareness and making the educated is the solution to bringing many issues to the attention of people and making them aware of certain impacts. Likewise, snakebite awareness workshops will benefit the community in many ways teaching them about snakes, their importance, first aid for snakebites, do’s and don’ts of snakebites, etc. Thus we started our journey to educate the community, with special focus given to the rural communities. Our journey to make people AWARE showed that misconceptions are the major enemy among these communities and they strongly believe that their concepts are true. First, we tried to tackle this, and then only we can equip them.

Thus to date, we completed 150+ workshops in several parts of India, especially in the Northern parts. Around 20,000 people were taught and including school and college students, forest officials, laymen, and other government officials. Faith healing and false beliefs were major factors that we addressed during our workshops and these are major reasons for the increased death toll due to snakebite. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Odisha, Assam, Gujarat, West Bengal, Kerala, and Chhattisgarh are the major states in India where we conducted workshops. Lack of proper first aid and treatment also paved the way to death tolls, thus we trained people on how to provide first aid and Anti Snake Venom (ASV) to rural hospitals.  The major strength is our rural volunteers who are actively conducting workshops using presentations and demonstrations and they help us to reach deep into the rural areas where snakebites are more. Biodiversity loss is another impact of lack of proper knowledge, thus we added a biodiversity component to our workshops.

Co-existence!!!