Snakebite crisis: Nigeria records 43,000 cases yearly amid antivenom shortage

By: Abudu Olalekan

The story usually starts the same way.

A farmer in the field at dusk. A child walking to the toilet outside. A young singer heading home after a rehearsal. Then a sudden sting on the leg. Or foot. Or hand. At first, it looks small. Then it becomes everything.

In Nigeria, this is not rare bad luck. It is routine. The Toxinological Society of Nigeria says the country records around 43,000 snakebite cases every single year. Almost 1,900 of those people don’t make it. Others survive, but with damaged kidneys, amputated limbs, or lives that never quite return to normal.

And yet, the one thing that can turn a snakebite from a death sentence into just a bad night – antivenom – is still missing in far too many hospitals.

Health experts, researchers and frontline doctors are now practically begging the Federal Government to wake up. They want antivenom to be treated as a national priority, not as some exotic drug you only remember when a tragedy trends on social media.

One such tragedy was 26‑year‑old Abuja‑based singer, Ifunanya Nwangene. Many Nigerians remember her face from The Voice Nigeria in 2021. She mixed jazz, opera, classical, and soul in a way that felt almost effortless. Last Saturday, a snakebite ended her life. Just like that.

Her death ripped the issue out of dusty reports and put it in people’s faces. Following the outrage, the Senate demanded that hospitals across the country must stock antivenom as a matter of policy. On paper, that sounds firm. On the ground, it is more complicated.

Here’s the brutal math.

Even when antivenom is available, each dose can cost between N180,000 and N250,000. That’s about four months’ income for someone earning the N70,000 minimum wage. Most snakebite victims are poor farmers, labourers, rural dwellers. They don’t have that kind of money lying around. They sell land. They sell goats. Sometimes they just stay home and pray. Many never reach the hospital at all.

Researchers on Neglected Tropical Diseases say about half of health facilities in Nigeria simply do not have the capacity to treat serious snakebite envenoming. In a global report under the Strike Out Snakebite initiative, 50 per cent of health workers here admitted their facilities lack full capacity for managing snakebite. A staggering 98 per cent said they face challenges even when trying to administer antivenom. That’s almost everyone.

Part of the problem is structural. The country’s health system is weak in rural areas. Poor roads. Inconsistent power supply. Under‑staffed centres. And then the key drug itself is scarce. A professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Jos, Patricia Lar, puts it bluntly: Nigeria has the science to produce antivenom locally, but not the commitment.

Instead, the country relies on imports from India, China, and the UK. That pushes up the cost and makes it hard to keep regular supplies in smaller hospitals and primary health centres – the very places people first run to when bitten.

Lar argues that until government makes antivenom availability a firm policy, subsidises it heavily, and treats it as an essential emergency medicine, the country will keep losing people unnecessarily. She also warns that many communities still don’t know what to do immediately after a bite – they waste time with harmful traditional methods, delay hospital visits, and arrive when it’s already too late.

Her colleague, Professor Chinyere Ukaga, a Public Health Parasitologist, adds another bitter truth: snakebite is on the World Health Organisation’s list of Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the way antivenom is treated in Nigeria sadly reflects that word – neglected. In places where bites are common, some hospitals try to stock antivenom. But where cases are rarer, it falls completely off the radar. Not on the priority list. Not in the budget.

Meanwhile, Nigeria is home to 29 snake species, and about four in ten are venomous. The reptiles don’t care about policy lists. They move through farms, bushes, and even crowded camps for displaced people. In 2025, a dozen internally displaced persons in Benue State reportedly had to rely on traditional medicine after snakebites because proper treatment and antivenom weren’t available regularly in their camp.

Doctors like Nicholas Amani, head of the Snakebite Hospital and Research Centre in Kaltungo, Gombe State, say antivenom is now a “globally scarce commodity”. Why? Because the people most affected – poor rural farmers – don’t have much political voice. No one lobbies hard on their behalf.

So the cycle continues. Scarcity. High prices. Late treatment. Deaths.

Experts are clear on what needs to change:
– Make antivenom free or heavily subsidised nationwide.
– Treat it as an emergency essential at primary health centres.
– Invest in local production, not just imports.
– Train health workers and communities on fast, correct first steps.
– Clean up environments and reduce snake habitats around homes and farms.

Until that happens, snakebite will remain what it already is in Nigeria: a quiet, deadly crisis that most people only notice when a famous name, like Ifunanya’s, is the one in the obituary.