Snakebites Kill at Least 274,000 People a Year, Study Says

At least 2.1 million people are envenomed by snakebites each year and at least 274,000 die, according to a modeling study published Aug. 25 in PLOS Medicine — the first global re-estimate the same research group has produced in 17 years.

Those are the study's low estimates. Its high estimates run to 7 million envenomings and 513,000 deaths annually. The paper reports both bounds rather than a single figure, and the authors write that the results "suggest that previous burden estimates could substantially underestimate the scale of the problem."

The 10 authors, led by Dileepa Senajith Ediriweera and including David Griffith Lalloo, assembled the estimates from a literature review of publications in any language up to March 31, 2025, together with country- and region-level aggregated data and hospital and community survey data. They then fitted geostatistical models — statistical models in which location is one of the variables — to produce per-country figures, accounting for possible underreporting where the paper judged that appropriate.

These are modeled numbers rather than counted cases, and the paper names the reasons the range is as wide as it is: "the scarcity and heterogeneity of empirical data in many countries and the reliance on modelling assumptions to estimate burden in settings with limited or no direct observations."

The burden is concentrated in low-income countries, which the study estimates have the highest incidence and mortality rates. Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for 45% of global envenomings and deaths, the authors report, close to three times the incidence observed in South Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia are the most severely affected regions, the paper says.

The authors call for better epidemiological data, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Their paper describes snake envenoming as "an important public health problem, disproportionately affecting impoverished rural communities in tropical and subtropical regions."