By:- Team VOH
30 Jun 2024
Nearly 40 years after pioneering a treatment for fatal red scorpion stings in rural India, Dr. Himmatrao Bawaskar, a 74-year-old physician from Mahad, Maharashtra, continues to receive international acclaim. This time, his groundbreaking work has been praised by Chinese researchers in a letter titled “Reducing Scorpion Sting Fatality Rate to 1% in India,” published in the latest edition of *The Lancet*, a leading medical journal.
Dr. Bawaskar, who received the Padma Shri in 2022 for his contributions to anti-scorpion venom treatment, expressed pride in the recognition from Chinese scientists. "I am most proud that my scorpion research has been acknowledged by China’s scientists. It is a great achievement for India," he told *The Times of India*.
Researchers from the National Key Laboratory of Green Pesticide, Guizhou University, noted that in the 1970s, scorpion stings had a fatality rate of over 40%. They highlighted that the region around Mahad is home to one of the world's most venomous red scorpions, Mesobuthus tamulus. In the 1980s, a sting from this scorpion was often fatal if the victim did not receive treatment promptly.
"Most people living in villages of India had no cure for poisonous scorpion stings and died without proper treatment; no proper medication was available and the medical knowledge of doctors was insufficient to address scorpion sting victims. This norm was broken by a village-born physician named Dr. Himmatrao Bawaskar," the letter stated.
The researchers acknowledged Dr. Bawaskar's invention of a treatment for scorpion sting envenomation and his efforts to educate doctors across rural India. "His treatment approaches reduced the fatality rate from 40% in the 1970s to 1% in 2014," the *Lancet* piece noted.
Dr. Bawaskar first described his treatment in a 1986 *Lancet* article, a time when original medical research from India was rarely documented internationally. The Indian Academy of Pediatrics, in its 2022 standard treatment guidelines, refers to him as the "unsung warrior and living legend who first gave prazosin in scorpion envenomation management in rural Maharashtra."
Following the Chinese researchers' letter, *The Lancet* also published a follow-up letter by Dr. Bawaskar on "India’s Forgotten Children," a topic he first wrote about in 2003. In his letter, Dr. Bawaskar highlighted that despite significant reductions in viral and bacterial diseases, poverty and illiteracy remain rampant in rural areas, leading to malnutrition and sepsis. "Since then, little has changed in the context of children’s health globally," he wrote.
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