I was also thinking of the high production costs as a potential area of intervention. A few minutes of browsing turned up some potential advancements in production methods of antivenom, e.g. using synthetic biology, and I would be interested in learning about the potential cost-effectiveness of implementing or scaling up such alternative production methods. It seems like many of them are still in the R&D-stage though, but this could be an area to keep a close eye on.
Since writing this article, this is actually one of the things I’ve been looking into! I think it looks very promising, as many of the issues outlined by WHO seem downstream from people simply being unable to afford high quality antivenom. (ie. why do people choose local healers? Because hospitals cost more and don’t help either!)
It also looks like the marginal cost of high quality antivenom would decrease up to an order of magnitude if you scale up production. I have yet to take an in depth look at synthetic antivenom production, but after briefly looking into it, it seems that we are not going to get synthetic antivenom just yet.
I was also thinking of the high production costs as a potential area of intervention. A few minutes of browsing turned up some potential advancements in production methods of antivenom, e.g. using synthetic biology, and I would be interested in learning about the potential cost-effectiveness of implementing or scaling up such alternative production methods. It seems like many of them are still in the R&D-stage though, but this could be an area to keep a close eye on.
A recent article on the topic:
https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/snakebite-antivenoms-step-into-the-future-15378
Since writing this article, this is actually one of the things I’ve been looking into! I think it looks very promising, as many of the issues outlined by WHO seem downstream from people simply being unable to afford high quality antivenom. (ie. why do people choose local healers? Because hospitals cost more and don’t help either!)
It also looks like the marginal cost of high quality antivenom would decrease up to an order of magnitude if you scale up production. I have yet to take an in depth look at synthetic antivenom production, but after briefly looking into it, it seems that we are not going to get synthetic antivenom just yet.