SHIVAMOGGA: Karnataka has emerged as the state with the highest number of snakebite deaths in the country in both 2024 and 2025. Nationally, snakebite deaths reported under the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) rose from 183 in 2023 to 370 in 2024 and 431 in 2025, more than doubling in two years. It is worth noting that many snakebite deaths in rural India go unreported entirely, often because victims never reach a healthcare facility or deaths are recorded under other causes.
Replying to an unstarred question from Davanagere MP Dr Prabha Mallikarjun in the Lok Sabha in the ongoing Budget Session of the Parliament, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Kirti Vardhan Singh said the ministry has issued a communication to all states and union territories, advising them to notify snakebite as a notifiable disease under the respective state.
The figures, drawn from the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) through the Integrated Health Information Portal (IHIP), show that Karnataka reported 19 deaths in 2023, 101 in 2024, and a staggering 157 in 2025. That adds up to 277 deaths over three years, the highest cumulative total among all states and union territories. To put that in perspective, West Bengal, which reported the second-highest combined count with 153 deaths over the same period, recorded significantly fewer fatalities than Karnataka in each of the last two years.
Tamil Nadu, which had led in 2023 with 43 deaths, reported 25 and 27 deaths in the subsequent years. The sharp upward trajectory in Karnataka’s numbers is what stands out. While many states have seen fluctuating or plateauing figures, Karnataka’s deaths have nearly tripled from 2023 to 2025.
On the question of notification, the minister informed that eight states have so far declared snakebite cases and deaths as notifiable diseases under their respective public health laws. Karnataka is one of those eight states, along with Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Kerala, Maharashtra and Odisha.
The Central government had issued an advisory to all states and union territories urging them to take this step under applicable legislation. Notification is a critical first step because it creates a legal obligation for healthcare providers to report cases, which in turn allows better tracking, resource allocation, and response planning.
The fact that a majority of states have still not notified snakebite as a reportable disease helps explain why national data remains fragmented. On the question of inter-ministerial coordination and ecological protection of snake species, the minister pointed to the National Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Snakebite Envenoming (NAPSE), developed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
It also referenced species-specific guidelines released on March 21, 2023, for mitigating human-wildlife conflict involving snakes, and an earlier advisory from February 2021 that recommended identifying conflict hotspots, setting up rapid response teams, and forming state and district level committees for coordinated action.
For Karnataka, where both the forest cover and the density of venomous species are considerable, the data raises questions that go beyond administrative coordination. Conservationists in the state have repeatedly flagged habitat fragmentation and shrinking forest buffers as drivers of human-snake encounters, particularly in districts bordering the Western Ghats and in the Malnad region.