Impact of climate change and land use on snakebite envenoming in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract With as many as 138,000 deaths, and 400,000 people with permanent disabilities annually, snakebite envenoming (SBE) impacts low resource areas of low and middle income countries (LMICs). As with other NTDs, SBEs are intrinsically related to the environment and recent impact of climate change. Climate related events or land use changes, due to deforestation or the growth of agricultural production, have impacted the risk of human and snake encounters and SBE. During our R21 Snakebite Antivenom Intervention A need to be Guaranteed (SAVING) project, we are developing an innovative multi-scale intervention optimizing timely SBE care delivery, including antivenom distribution among existing community healthcare centers (CHCs) network in the Brazilian Amazon. Our goal for this R21 supplement is to leverage our current SAVING data repository efforts to study the association of land usage and climate change with SBE occurrence, severity and care needs. We will combine land usage and climate change data with our current data sources and analyze their association with SBE in the Brazilian Amazon.