Snakebites surge across Southasia amid rising heat, floods and habitat loss

Ali Jabir Malik

ISLAMABAD, Jun 02 (APP): Climate change is driving an increase in snakebites and envenomation deaths in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and beyond – and the community-driven solutions are leading the fightback.

In Punjabi, they call avoiding a snakebite “kakh lagna”, denoting a narrow escape. A 39-year-old journalist and farmer, Chaudhry Waqar Anwar said that he narrowly escaped snake bites thrice in the fields around Gujranwala, in Pakistan’s province of Punjab.

Anwar recounted how snakes often hide under…