Billy: And you can see there an absolutely massive yield.
And that amount of venom there
is enough to kill a couple of hundred grown men, no worries.
Narrator: Billy Collett is collecting venom
to help make life-saving medicine for snakebites.
Billy: These guys are literally one of
the most toxic snakes on the planet.
Narrator: Millions of people suffer venomous snakebites
every year around the world.
If you get bitten by a rattlesnake,
it's like having your hand smashed with a hammer.
Narrator: The most common way of making antivenom
is by first injecting snake venom into animals like horses
and then drawing their blood.
But producing it is expensive,
and some parts of the world are facing a desperate shortage.
As many as 137,000 people die from snakebites each year.
David: We call these neglected tropical diseases,
and it's really important that we find ways to to solve it.
Narrator: So why are animals still used to make antivenom?
And what can we do to solve this hidden health crisis?
This lab is one of the only places
in Australia milking snakes.
Billy: My mum in particular thinks I'm a lunatic
because I wanted to do this for a job.
Narrator: Billy cares for 300 deadly snakes.
Billy: Coastal taipans, eastern browns, tiger snakes,
common death adders, and king browns.
Narrator: First, he prepares the milking cup.
Billy: So if you went to a nightclub or a pub
and you asked for a shot like Fireball,
this is what they give it in to you.
I know a fellow that was bitten by a large coastal taipan.
Within about 15 minutes, he was showing symptoms.
He was extremely nauseous, vomiting, sweating,
and by the 20-minute mark, he was almost unconscious.
He was bleeding out of his eyes,
his gums, every orifice in his body.
He was in a coma for 11 days, but he did survive that bite.
So this is a tiger snake.
These guys are literally one of
the most toxic snakes on the planet.
And you can see I'm using the snake hook here
to keep the head away from my hand and the rest of my body.
And when we are coming into the milking process,
basically, I drop the hook like that.
I have the snake in my right hand.
We've got a soft pinning pad there.
So this is basically like a foam mattress.
I've got my pinning device, which is a clear Perspex disc.
So what we do is we flick the snake
onto the pinning pad like that, apply the pinner,
and I can see exactly where its head is,
and I can have my fingers right there, ready to go.
And so that's the snake restrained.
And the next part
is where I actually milk the snake.
So what he's going to do is he's going to think he's bitten me.
There we go.
Nice yield there.
And that amount of venom,
that's enough to kill over 50 adult men.
Narrator: There are about 600 species
of venomous snakes around the world
concentrated in these hotspots.
Australia is home to more than 100 of them.
Billy: Australia's got more venomous snakes
than nonvenomous snakes.
We're the only country in the world with that.
Narrator: Each snake's venom is made up
of a unique cocktail of toxins that attack your body.
A king cobra's venom often goes after the nervous system
and can kill a human in 15 minutes.
A viper's venom can stop blood from clotting
and cause internal bleeding.
And in rare cases, bites can stop your heart.
Each week, Billy milks over 100 different snakes,
including this coastal taipan,
one of the most dangerous in Australia.
Its venom could cause paralysis.
Billy: Taipans are are so reactive,
and they're so smart and calculated.
They do make me very nervous to work with.
And you can see there an absolutely massive yield.
And that amount of venom there
is enough to kill a couple of hundred grown men, no worries.
So once we milk the snakes,
we then freeze it just in a basic freezer.
So the venoms are stored with the different species.
And you'll notice taipan venom,
once it's frozen, is actually pink.
So all the different species
have actually got different-colored venom.
Down here we've got the tiger snake,
and you can see it's like a light yellowy sort of a color.
Eastern brown's clear. The king brown
is a really rich, deep, dark yellow, like you can see here.
A few months later, when we've got enough together,
we'll actually freeze-dry it.
We turn this on, we set it to minus 56 degrees Celsius,
and basically it freezes, freeze-dries,
and draws all that moisture out within about 48 hours.
And we're left with this crystallized product.
Narrator: Freeze-dried venom
is easier to transport and lasts longer.
Billy says the venom from his lab has saved
over a quarter-million lives in Australia.
Billy: It's a huge weight on our shoulders,
but we're all extremely passionate
and proud of the work we do here.
Narrator: But snakes aren't the only animals needed.
Horses are also key to making antivenom.
Mauricio: We're producing a medication,
so the horses need to be healthy,
need to be in a good body condition.
Narrator: Mauricio Arguedas is in charge of the farm
run by Instituto Clodomiro Picado,
Central America's only supplier of antivenom.
His team injects horses with small doses of venom.
It's important they're precise.
Too much could hurt the horse.
Mauricio: It's a very dangerous process.
We need to be really careful
with everything that we do here.
Narrator: The horses will begin to produce antibodies,
which will eventually become antivenom.
The healthier the horse,
the more antibodies they produce.
Mauricio's team collects their blood every two weeks.
They wash and shave the horse's neck to prevent infection.
Then they extract blood from the horse's jugular vein.
It takes less than a half an hour to collect 6 liters.
Just one blood bag is worth over $500.
Mauricio: We separate the plasma, and from the plasma,
we separate the antibodies.
And that's what you get injected
if you get bitten by a snake.
Narrator: Scientists have used horse blood
to make treatments since the 1800s.
Inspired by vaccine science of the era,
the French doctor Albert Calmette injected cobra venom
into rabbits and horses.
He used their blood to make an early version of antivenom.
Animals like horses are still used today
because they have a lot of blood
to produce antibodies at scale.
Mauricio: We're producing a medication that's able to save lives.
It's something that's very appealing and very rewarding.
Narrator: This lab, 9 miles away,
receives the plasma from the farm
and converts it into antivenom
that's safe to inject into humans.
It can protect against a wide variety of snakes,
but it doesn't come cheap.
Narrator: The lab produces roughly 120,000 vials a year.
They end up across the Americas and Africa.
Andrés: Depending on the snake,
we may require between 10 or 20 vials per person.
Narrator: The sooner a victim is treated,
the more likely they are to survive and recover quickly.
It's a recovery David Williams
of the World Health Organization knows well.
He has survived six snakebites in his life.
The product we used in Papua New Guinea,
we had a survival rate of nearly 99%.
Narrator: But not everyone
has access to quality antivenom,
and as many as 137,000 people die
from snakebites each year.
And there could be thousands more unreported.
Every year, there are
an estimated 58,000 snakebite deaths in India alone.
The Irular Cooperative collects most of India's venom.
It pays its members to catch snakes:
nearly $30 for a spectacled cobra,
or about $3.50 for a saw-scaled viper, seen here.
The cooperative collects venom
from India's four most dangerous snakes,
which is blended together to make one antivenom.
But roughly 65% of India's population lives in rural areas,
far from city hospitals,
making it hard to get antivenom to victims in time.
The same problem exists in Sub-Saharan Africa,
where as many as 30,000 people die a year from snakebites.
Many victims don't go to hospitals.
so the data is hard to track.
As the world doesn't look at this problem,
it is the poor person at the end of the line
in the community that cannot afford it
that's the person that's bitten.
Narrator: Before his death in 2019,
Royjan Taylor dedicated his life
to improving antivenom access
for poor rural communities in Kenya.
There is a need for antivenom
because we don't have enough antivenom now.
Narrator: Alvia Ndunge's child
was bitten in Kitui County, Kenya,
about 100 miles east of Nairobi.
Narrator: The county has to use a motorcycle ambulance
to get some victims to hospitals.
But not everyone gets medical help in time.
Mwende Kilonzo's child died after a snake bit her
in the middle of the night.
Narrator: The Kenya Snakebite Research
and Intervention Centre
hopes to develop the first antivenom in East Africa.
No one has produced any kind of antivenom in Kenya.
We call it an African puff adder.
This is the most common snake we come across in Africa.
It seems to bite many people.
Narrator: It's also one of the most deadly on the continent.
In Sub-Saharan Africa,
the most effective treatment for a snakebite
can cost more than $100 a vial,
and victims sometimes need more than 10 of them.
David: Many of the people who get bitten are breadwinners,
so you know if they're in a hospital bed,
their family's going hungry.
Narrator: Many victims couldn't afford treatments,
so some manufacturers stopped producing antivenom
for Sub-Saharan Africa altogether.
Today, there's a dire shortage of quality antivenom.
The Kenya intervention center
has a database of venom from local snakes
but hasn't been able to set up a horse farm
or antivenom lab yet.
Mauricio: You need to have the land,
you need to maintain the land, the pastures,
do all the maintenance.
David: To set up an antivenom manufacturing facility
to the right specifications is going to cost
somewhere between $10 million and $30 million USD.
Narrator: A few countries
have greatly reduced their death rates,
thanks in part to government investment.
In Costa Rica, just one to two people die each year
from snakebites.
Australia's death count is just as low.
Both countries have free antivenom treatment.
Most places worldwide, you have to pay for antivenom,
and it is unbelievably expensive.
So here in Australia, we are unbelievably lucky
that the government looks after us in that way.
Mátyás: These are some interesting ones. Yeah.
Narrator: Researchers like Mátyás Bittenbinder
are trying to make antivenom cheaper and more accessible.
His work is partly funded by the Naturalis museum,
which preserves 30,000 snakes for research.
Some of the jars are over 100, 150 years old.
This is a really interesting species.
This is the Russell's viper,
and this is one of the species
that is most heavily feared in India
and also one of the species that we're studying in our lab.
Narrator: Mátyás is researching ways to produce antibodies in a lab,
which would eliminate horses from the process
and require less venom from live snakes.
Mátyás: You're not using the animals as the factories
to produce the antibodies.
You could produce them in bulk in the lab.
So we are standing now in front of our,
basically our chamber of secrets.
And in here, this is where we keep our snake venoms.
Narrator: He's studying how venom affects the human cells
in this well plate.
Mátyás: We have the venom of a rattlesnake,
which we know is capable of destroying the cells.
We can see these, like, very prominent holes.
So you can imagine that when you get bitten by a rattlesnake
and then the venoms cause to punch holes in your blood vessels,
then you will bleed out from the inside.
Narrator: Mátyás hopes his research will help scientists
develop an oral tablet that would work on all snakebites.
Mátyás: It could be the holy grail,
which makes it possible to neutralize the effects
of all the different snake species.
Narrator: That would make it easier to get treatment
to victims in rural communities hit hardest.
Mátyás: This is my hope.
And to be able to study these magnificent creatures
and their effects.
But also to, yeah,
to help the people that need it the most.