Identification of Antidote Medicinal Plants against Snake Venom - A Field Survey

Snake bites in India cause loss of many precious lives. Snakes are considered as harmful to human and to avoid them many snakes are killed by human. About thousands of people reportedly die of snakebite in India every year and however, the unreported cases also even more, mostly in rural India. There are two important aspects of snakebite Management, one is the management of victim of snakebite and then the timely medical management - antivenom serum therapy. Plant products have many pharmaceutical agents and are used as traditional medicine to cure disorders from ancient days. There was place for plant medicines, with proven biologically activity particularly for chronic diseases that were not cured effectively with synthetic medicines. It was very strenuous to generate, unbiased, objective, scientific data on such plant medicines used in India either directly as folk remedies or medicaments of different indigenous systems of medicine like Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha, India has nearly 400,000 practitioners of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani etc. whose services were not appropriately used in the health care services. About 80% of the raw materials for drugs used in the Indian systems of Medicine and homeopathy is based on plant products. Field survey focuses mainly on alternative uses of plants for protection against poisonous bites, especially Naja naja - snake venom and identified many antidote plants.