The race to treat snakebite patients in time to save them could be eased by the development of software powered by artificial intelligence.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is testing AI snake detection in South Sudan using a database of 380,000 photos of snakes to identify venomous species.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as many as 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes annually, of whom up to 2.7 million become seriously ill and 138,000 die from complications. Identification is a difficult but crucial part of treatment to ensure that rare and expensive antidotes are used only when necessary.
Dr Gabriel Alcoba, an MSF medical adviser on snakebites and neglected tropical diseases, said: “Early results are promising; the AI sometimes identifies snakes even better than experts.
“I remember a time when we used photo albums to identify snakes in MSF hospitals. Medical staff would scroll through photographs to find out which snake had bitten a patient,” he added.
The application is submitted to two MSF hospitals South Sudanwhere the numbers of people taken to hospital with snakebites are high. Between January and the end of July 2024, more than 300 snakebite patients were treated in MSF medical facilities across the country.
When someone is bitten, medics encourage taking photos at the time or having their staff cautiously return to the site to photograph the snake.
The photos are fed into AI-powered software to help identify the type of snake and what type of treatment is needed, even before the patient gets to the hospital. Alcoba said the program’s accuracy could be further developed with more funding, research and better quality photos.
“Often patients receive the wrong treatment because the snake is not correctly identified, or valuable antivenom is wasted on bites from non-venomous snakes, which can also cause serious side effects. Antidote is rare and extremely expensive, costing a patient anywhere from a month to a year’s salary,” Alcoba said.
David Williams, a WHO snakebite expert, said bites can cause a person to stop breathing, as well as kidney failure, tissue damage and fatal bleeding.
Rural communities are the worst affected, Williams said, and many of the 240,000 people disabled by snakebites each year are driven into poverty by the cost of treatment and loss of income.
He said climate collapse was causing increasing concern about snakebites, with recent flooding leading to an increase in incidents in South Sudan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan and Myanmar.
Many of those countries do not have enough treatments – only 2.5% of what is needed Africa is available – and a lack of regulation has led to the sale of fake antidotes that have eroded trust within many communities.
