The World Health Organization has launched a website intended to help reduce the number of people killed or disabled by snake bites around the world. It estimates that some one hundred thousand people die every year out of the two and a half million who are bitten by snakes. Daniel Aberheart reports.
Do you know the difference between a puff adder and a gaboon viper? Where you'd want to if you'd got bitten by either one. They’re both deadly and look broadly similar. But some types of antivenoms only work for the puff adder. It's then that you’d want to access a site like this. This database provides a photographic guide to all poisonous snakes in the world and advice on appropriate anti-venoms. The WHO hopes it can be used by health workers and by governments to plan what antivenoms they should stockpile.
Parliament in France has voted to give the tattooed and mummified heads of some 15 Maori warriors back to New Zealand. The elaborately decorated heads, some with hair and teeth, were plundered by explorers long ago. This report from Hugh Schofield in Paris.
Two centuries ago it was a mark of success for Bukharin Colonists in New Zealand to possess the head of a dead Maori warrior. Overall it's reckoned that some five hundred Maori heads were taken abroad, many ending up in museums. Now attitudes have changed, more than three hundred have been taken back for reburial. France will now join that process. The will to make amends has long been there. But it’s required an active parliament because museums found that they were banned by law from giving up what was technically the inalienable property of the French state.