AbstractBackground: Agricultural work is subject to the health risks inherent to a rural environment and at the same time to those deriving from the specific work process involved. It appears that a large number of people die from snakebites every year, with many cases in the south and southeastern regions of Asia. Most bites occur in rural areas where the work place (forest and field) is the most likely site. Scorpion bites & Spider bites too are a relatively frequent concurrence. Objectives: The main objective is to find out the magnitude and seasonal variations of various bites among agricultural workers in this area. Mathodology: Type of Study: It is a Cross-Sectional study . The study was conducted from the period of June 2009 to December 2011. Data Collection: Data collection was done through asking questionnaire from the patients/relatives; clinical examination and clinical case records of the patients. Analysis of Data: Data was analyzed in the form of percentage (%) and presented in the tabular form. Results: Total 301 patients of agriculture related biological health hazards were studied, out of these maximum number of patients were males (58.47%), followed by females (41.53%). Majority of the patients (30.57%) were belonging to age group of 20 to 35 years. Majority (81.72%) of the victims were from rural area followed by 18.28% of patients were from urban area. The maxium cases were due to snake bite (46.18%) followed by unknown bite (22.60%), scorpion sting (19.93%), insect bite (8.97%) & others (1.99). Among the majority cases (46.04%) of snake bites were during rainy season followed by winter (35.97%) and least (17.99%) cases were found during summer.
Keywords: AWs: Agricultural Workers; Snake bite; Scorpion sting.