Epidemiological Profile of Snake Bite in South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal with Focus on Underreporting of Snake Bite Deaths.
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Date
2014-01
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Abstract
Background: Snake bite is a neglected public health problem in India. Very few community based epidemiological
studies in India have been published so far on this issue. Most of the studies were carried out on hospital data. Previous
community-based survey in the state revealed that only 22% snake bite victims attended hospitals. Objectives:
The objective of the present study is to fi nd out the epidemiological profi le of snake bite in eight blocks of the South
24-Paraganas district of West Bengal and to explore the under reporting of snake bite deaths in health facilities in that
area during the study period. Materials and Methods: A retrospective analysis of snake bite data was carried out from
a community-based epidemiological survey on 1.9 million populations. This survey was done door-to-door from January
2009 to October 2010 to get epidemiological profi le of snake bite of the previous 2 years. The data of direct survey was
compared with the offi cial report of the same area to evaluate the hospital-based data with focus on underreporting of
snakebite deaths. Results: A total number of snake bite cases as found in the survey in the study area was 4871. There
was a huge gap between the two data (direct survey and offi cial data). Only 7.23% snake bite deaths were offi cially
reported. Only 22.19% of the snake bite victims attended the hospitals. Nearly 65.7% of the snake bite deaths were
due to common krait bite, most of them occurring in the months of June to September. Conclusions: Offi cial reporting
system is still having a huge defi ciency in India. Snake bite needs to get more attention from the health authority.
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Keywords
Community survey, Offi cial reporting, Snake bite
Citation
Majumder Dayalbandhu, Sinha Abhik, Bhattacharya Salil Kumar, Ram Rama, Dasgupta Urmila, Ram A. Epidemiological Profile of Snake Bite in South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal with Focus on Underreporting of Snake Bite Deaths. Indian Journal of Public Health. 2014 Jan-Mar; 58(1): 17-21.