This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Dermatology  • Bites and Stings  • World Health  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2007;297:686.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 127 words of the full text and any section headings.

The World Health Organization announced creation of a $10 million 5-year plan to improve access in developing countries to treatment for rabies, snake bites, and scorpion stings.

More than 12 million people are bitten by dogs or snakes or stung by scorpions each year, but the therapeutic sera needed to treat these conditions is often unavailable or prohibitively expensive in the countries where it is most needed. More than 99% of human deaths from rabies occur in Africa and Asia; most of the 5 million snake bites and scorpion stings recorded each year are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The plan calls for boosting production of therapeutic sera, facilitating transfer of technology to developing countries, and addressing logistic problems in distributing therapeutic sera.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?