A pilot study on snake bite deaths in the district of Malda, West Bengal, India

Abstract

The alarming number of deaths due to snake bite are often under-reported and missed due to several interrelated socioeconomic factors. Epidemiology of fatal snake bite have been reported sparsely from West Bengal in recent past. The present investigation was devised to explore the profile of the fatal cases of envenomation in snake bite from a district of northern part of West Bengal. Deaths due to snake bite constituted 02.067% of all unnatural deaths from mortuary data. The mean age of the cases of fatal snake bite was 34.18 with SD 2.67. It was seen that the mean interval between bite and treatment was 3.35 hours with SD 0.48. The present work was a short regional research to supplement epidemiology and add to the database of deaths from snake bite in a district of West Bengal, India.