As monitoring of snakebites is not mandatory, many go unreported each year and it is hard to accurately determine exact numbers. Globally there are predicted to be 5.4million snakebites each year, half of these will contain venom and 125,000 people will die from them.
In Australia there are about 1000-3000 snakebites each year and 200-500 of these will receive antivenom. In ten years (1981-1991) there was 18 fatal snakebites. 11 were caused by Brown snakes and 4 from tiger snakes.
The number of snakebite caused death each year, roughly 2-4, is similar to the USA. This is a large proportion when you consider Australia has a population about 10% of the US.
Sources:
University of Sydney, "Australian Snake Bites"
http://www.usyd.edu.au/anaes/venom/snakebite.html
Snake-bites: appraisal of the global situation, J.P. Chippaux
http://www.who.int/bloodproducts/publications/en/bulletin_1998_76(5)_515-524.pdf
Deaths from snake bite in Australia, 1981-1991, SK Sutherland
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1453996
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