Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, Prof Nasidi Abdulsalami has said that Nigeria has the capability to produce anti-snake venom and will soon begin mass production once granted approval.
Nasidi explained that the snake anti venom is presently produced by Echi TAB in collaboration with UK and Costa Rica but that it was championed by Echi TAB and the Nigerian study group.
Joe Pittman, a snakebite treatment specialist at the Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa said “It’s ridiculous that we’re losing a technology that we already have. It’s even more ludicrous that we have a product that’s available, and we have to jump through so many hoops to get it approved.”
Recently Doctors without Borders warned that the world is running out of anessential snake anti-venom because Sanofi Pasteur, the French company that used to manufacture the anti-venom, ceased production back in 2014.