LET’S PRODUCE MORE ANTI-SNAKE VENOM

LET’S PRODUCE MORE ANTI-SNAKE VENOM

Every now and then, we hear of tragic stories — someone bitten by a cobra in a remote area, rushed to a hospital hours away, only to die along the way because no anti-snake venom was available nearby. Just recently, a seven-year-old boy from Davao de Oro died after being bitten several times by a banakon (king cobra). It is a story that keeps repeating itself in our countryside, and yet the solution seems simple enough — produce more antivenom and make it available where people actually need it.

The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) already produces our own Purified Cobra Antivenom (PCAV), a life-saving serum that can neutralize venom from local cobra species. That’s a major achievement. But if PCAV exists, why are so many rural health centers still empty-handed?

At first glance, this could be seen as a distribution problem — the antivenom isn’t getting to the far-flung areas fast enough. But if we look deeper, it’s also a production problem. You can’t distribute what you don’t have enough of.

The Horse in the Room

The good news is that producing PCAV isn’t rocket science. The process begins with horses — yes, horses! These noble creatures are naturally resistant to many snake venoms, including that of the king cobra. When injected with small, safe doses of venom, their immune systems produce antibodies that can neutralize the toxins. These antibodies are then extracted from their blood plasma, purified, and processed into antivenom.

In short, horses save human lives — quietly, selflessly, and literally.

And here’s more good news: we have plenty of horses in the Philippines. The technology is already here, the expertise exists at RITM, and the raw material — horse plasma — is abundant. So what’s missing? Funding, coordination, and political will.

The Bureaucratic Bottleneck

Let’s face it — our health bureaucracy can sometimes be slower than a sedated python. RITM has the capacity and the scientists, but it depends on the Department of Health (DOH) for budget and policy support. DOH, in turn, must convince Congress to allocate sufficient funds for production and nationwide distribution. Somewhere in that chain, urgency seems to get lost.

Senator Raffy Tulfo recently called for legislation requiring all hospitals to maintain a minimum stock of anti-snake venom, following a fatal case in Isabela. But what good is a mandate if there’s no supply to begin with? We can’t legislate antivenom into existence — we must fund it.

If Congress could reallocate even a small portion of the billions spent yearly on flood control projects (many of which, let’s be honest, just vanish like water in the sand), we could easily double RITM’s production capacity.

The Rural Reality

As of now, the antivenom is stocked mainly in large medical centers like the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital in Tagbilaran or Don Emilio del Valle Memorial Hospital in Ubay, Bohol. But in the rural barangays — where farmers, loggers, and children are most likely to encounter snakes — there’s often nothing.

Imagine this: a farmer in Quezon or a boy in Davao de Oro gets bitten. The nearest hospital with PCAV is in Muntinlupa. Even if an ambulance comes, the victim’s fate is often sealed before arrival. We cannot keep letting geography decide who lives and who dies.

What Needs to Be Done

1. Regional Antivenom Labs – Establish at least one processing and storage center per region. Transporting plasma or venom samples to Manila makes no sense when snakebites happen in the provinces.
   
   

2. Barangay Emergency Kits – Equip barangay health centers with first aid kits that include PCAV, along with trained personnel who can administer it quickly.
   
   

3. Community Awareness Programs – Teach residents basic snakebite prevention and response. In most cases, delay — not the bite itself — kills the patient.
   
   

4. Inter-agency Collaboration – Let RITM handle production, DOH handle logistics, and LGUs handle storage and rapid response.
   
   

5. Private Partnerships – Why not engage veterinary pharmaceutical firms, universities, or even horse breeders to help scale up production?
   
   

A Matter of Priorities

If we already have the scientists, the horses, and the technology — what’s holding us back? Sometimes, it feels like lives are being lost not because we lack science, but because we lack urgency.

Snakebites are not rare freak accidents. The World Health Organization classifies them as a neglected tropical disease, with over 80,000 deaths globally every year, mostly in rural Asia and Africa. The Philippines, with its high incidence of cobra bites, is clearly in that danger zone.

Yet despite this, antivenom remains a low-profile budget item — overshadowed by headline projects like roadworks or flyovers. Infrastructure is important, yes, but how many lives does a road save compared to a vial of PCAV administered on time?

The Ultimate Goal

My wish is that no Filipino should ever die just because the nearest health center ran out of antivenom — or never had it in the first place. In fact, we should produce more PCAV than we currently need, so that every region can maintain a safety buffer.

We owe it to our people — and, strangely enough, to our horses — to make that happen.

Let’s not wait for another child to die in his mother’s arms before we act. Let’s produce more anti-snake venom — now, not later.

Ramon Ike V. Seneres, www.facebook.com/ike.seneres

iseneres@yahoo.com, senseneres.blogspot.com

02-12-2026