VenOx25 Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr David Williams
Dr David Williams’ lifelong fascination with venomous snakes began with a schoolboy’s backyard menagerie, that grew into a passion that has steered the course of his adult life. His interactions with venomous snakes, and his work on behalf of global snakebite victims, have shown him the realities of what it is like to be affected by snakebite envenoming (SBE) both as a patient, and as a health worker. This empathy, borne from painful firsthand experience has made him a determined voice for snakebite victims around the world. Drawn early to the public education benefits of zoological exhibits, and then, the potential of research to solve snakebite problems in at-risk communities, and later, the need to master the global health political landscape to drive positive change, his career has been an unconventional evolution of purpose. Rather than seeking out an academic career, he turned to academia as a means to acquire tools to facilitate development of on-the-ground solutions to real-world snakebite problems. Dr Williams was founding head of the Charles Campbell Toxinology Centre based in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea from 2012-2019 and Head of the Australian Venom Research Unit, in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Melbourne, Parkville Australia from 2015-2019. He was the founder and pro-bono CEO of the Global Snakebite Initiative, an International Society on Toxinology (IST)-endorsed, non-profit organisation providing advocacy for improved access to effective treatment of SBE from 2012-2021. In this capacity, Dr Williams led GSI’s successful push for recognition by WHO of SBE as a neglected tropical disease (2017). In 2024, he received the IST’s Redi Award, the highest recognition by the global toxinological community.
In Papua New Guinea, his team demonstrated that a holistic approach to snakebite prevention and control combining community engagement, health worker training and education, access to good quality antivenoms, health systems development and innovative science can change the trajectory of the disease dramatically. At the outset of his work there in 2003-2004, snakebites claimed the lives of 1 in 6 adults and 1 in every 4 children admitted to Port Moresby General Hospital. Since then, the case fatality rate for both adults and children has been cut to less than 2% through the work of his programme. When told that development of a new antivenom was unaffordable, his team forged a collaboration with Costa Rican colleagues that culminated in production of the first new antivenom for the Australasian region in 50 years and successfully demonstrated effectiveness and safety in preclinical and clinical studies. His team implemented a unique new antivenom distribution system for the country and trained more than 2000 health workers from 2004-2019. He believes well-designed antivenoms manufactured competently using 20th Century technology, formulated with practical application in mind and deployed in parallel with community and health systems interventions in affected countries, can deliver excellent outcomes for hundreds of thousands of snakebite victims each year.
He is currently a scientist in the WHO Regulation and Prequalification Department managing projects on the risk-benefit assessment of antivenoms for Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and Asia. He also supports technical needs on snakebite for the WHO NTD Department as it begins rolling out the snakebite strategy. Having spent decades working in and around snakebite-affected communities in fragile health systems, Dr Williams has a pragmatic and practical understanding of the challenges to overcome to improve the lives of people living in poverty and of the role that ensuring effective prevention, control and treatment of snakebite plays in this context. He believes that empowered and well-trained health workers in communities sensitized and educated about snakebite risks, prevention and treatment-seeking behaviour, who have access to affordable, safe, and effective antivenoms hold the key to solving the world’s snakebite crisis.
