Global Epidemiology of Snakebite Envenoming: A Scoping Review of Geographic Gaps and Reported Data

Snakebite envenoming is the world’s deadliest neglected tropical disease, predominantly affecting the most resource-limited regions. This scoping review aimed to map the global landscape of studies investigating the epidemiology of snakebite envenoming. Of the 1700 studies included in this review, nearly half were from authors based in high-income countries. While trends in authorship have changed over time, authors from low-income countries were consistently underrepresented in the body of literature. This underscores a critical gap between where the burden of snakebite lies and where the literature is coming from (which may, in part, reflect general geographic inequities in the literature databases). Further, there were variables that were well-reported across the body of literature, like age and sex of the person affected by snakebite envenoming. However, there were gaps related to the reporting of outcomes such as reproductive complications, qualitative outcomes, and costs associated with snakebite care.