LARKANA: The Sindh government is planning to hand over management of the Anti-Snake Venom (ASV) Laboratory in Sakrand to the Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS) and upgrade the lab to produce the ASV on a mass scale, which will bring down cost of a single dose to only Rs1,000 from Rs50,000 a vial incurred on import of the drug from India.

The laboratory’s consultant Dr Naeem Qureshi told Dawn here recently that the plan for the large-scale production of ASV had been prepared and “we will be able to go for mass production of the drug within one and a half year after shifting of the management and sufficient, uninterrupted release of funds”.

He said that revised PC-I and rapid release of funds would help accomplish the huge task. The ASV was prepared applying ‘Caprylic Acid Fractionation’ technique that was currently used in Costa Rica, Thailand and Pakistan and presently around 500 vials were ready at the laboratory, he said.

If produced on a mass scale, the drug would become highly inexpensive and a single dose (vial) would cost only Rs1,000 per patient as compared to the Indian ASV which cost Rs50,000, he said.

The ASV laboratory has been working since 2004 in Sakrand where experiments are carried out on the venoms extracted from different species of snakes found in Sindh like cobra, lundi (saw-scaled viper), sangchor and Russell’s viper, he said.

Initially, the laboratory worked under the Nawabshah Medical University and now the plan was almost ready to hand over its management to GIMS, said Dr Qureshi who had remained attached with the project since its launch.

Asked about frequency of snake-bite cases, he said that Pakistan was the second country in the world in number of snake-bite cases and of them 50 per cent cases were reported in Sindh alone.

“We need equipment for the mass-scale production of the ASV. After meeting local demand, we will be able to sell the drug in the world market at cheaper rate,” he said.

He said the ASV’s WHO-approved trial had been carried out in 2015 and now, if the required funds were made available in time, the drug’s mass-scale production could be started after getting a nod from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan. The laboratory was established at a cost of Rs350 million, he said.

Dr Qureshi, who is a reputed scientist, said in reply to a question that Sindh might lead the country in the production of ASV and be able to meet the national demand if the chief minister released sufficient funds for purchasing the required equipment.

Sindh was the only province that had carried out trials of the drug and successfully evolved the ASV and now the onus was on other stakeholders to join hands for the important project, he said.

He said the mass-scale production of ASV would help save precious foreign exchange and reduce bed occupancy in hospitals besides saving time.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2021