Posted on 06/19/2021 11:23:35 AM PDT by billorites
A southern Alberta couple who realized their infant had eaten raccoon feces found themselves racing against time to find a rare medication — and doctors and pharmacists across Western Canada mobilized to help them find it.
Ashley Haughton learned raccoon scat can be extremely dangerous when she found it in her yard in Lethbridge, Alta., and researched how to dispose of it safely.
Raccoons can carry a deadly form of roundworm called Baylisascaris procyonis, and the eggs live in their feces.
An extremely rare parasitic infection can occur if humans ingest the eggs, which hatch into larvae, travel through the body and invade organs, including the eyes and brain.
And so when her one-year-old son ate raccoon feces from a flower pot in the garden just over four weeks ago, Haughton knew to be alarmed: Symptoms of the infection include brain damage, blindness and coma.
It can also be deadly.
"They go through the stomach barrier, they infest your body ... and essentially eat you from the inside out," Jon Martin, the boy's father, told Calgary Eyeopener, a CBC Radio morning show, on Thursday.
"And if you don't treat them quickly enough, there isn't really a way to reverse the effects, because they've literally eaten your tissue." Health Canada gave special authorization
Martin and Haughton immediately called their family doctor and the province's Poison & Drug Information Service.
Both advised the parents to wait and see if their son — whom they didn't want to name in order to protect his privacy — developed symptoms of infection.
Instead, the parents sought to have the feces tested for roundworm, and their veterinarian confirmed the worst: The sample was infested with so many eggs and larvae that they were unable to count them all.
After rushing their son to a hospital emergency room, they were prescribed albendazole, which needs to be taken within three days of exposure.
Special authorization to write the prescription was given by Health Canada, as its manufacturer has not filed a drug submission in Canada, the department told CBC News.
"We started calling around ... to try and track it down and then soon realized that it wasn't available commonly at all," Martin said. 'I couldn't imagine being in that situation'
When Lethbridge pharmacist Bryce Barry got the call that Martin was looking for albendazole and why, he immediately understood the dire predicament.
"I've got young kids, and I couldn't imagine being in that situation," said Barry, who works at Shoppers Drug Mart in Park Place Mall.
But when he checked his suppliers, Barry realized he couldn't bring in the medication to his pharmacy. And when he discovered it's not commercially available in Canada, he started contacting his network. Bryce Barry, a pharmacist at Shoppers Drug Mart in Lethbridge's Park Place Mall, sprang into action when he got the call that Jon Martin needed albendazole for his son. Barry immediately started contacting other pharmacies for help. (Google Maps)
When a drug is not widely available, a compounding pharmacy can prepare personalized medications for patients by mixing individual ingredients together in the exact strength and dosage required.
Barry's friend, Dawson Bremner, had opened a pharmacy in Vancouver that had many suppliers outside of Canada and was doing a lot of compounding — and might be able to order, or make, albendazole.
Bremner couldn't do either, but instead he contacted his pharmaceutical representative, who mass-emailed clients across Western Canada.
It had not compounded the anti-parasitic formula in more than a decade, but it had the medication and the ingredients needed to make it into a palatable liquid.
"When we first got that email ... my technician took it very seriously," said Script co-owner and pharmacist Aleem Datoo. Pharmacist Aleem Datoo, co-owner of Script Pharmacy in Calgary, where the medication was made, says providing it was a 'total team effort.' (Script Pharmacy)
"[But] I don't think we had the full sense of how [serious] the situation was until a few weeks later, when our provincial college called and verified that [the feces] did have this certain parasite.
"That's when we really fully appreciated what had been done — but on our end, it had been a total team effort."
Martin and Haughton, meanwhile, were preparing to drive to Montana to get the drug when they learned the Calgary pharmacy could make it.
"It was one of the happiest phone calls I think you can get in a situation like this," Martin said.
"I mean, I kind of had a breakdown on the phone." 'Everybody came together'
Fifty-six hours after ingesting raccoon feces, Martin and Haughton's son received his first dose of albendazole.
And from the hospital doctors to the veterinarian to a chain of pharmacists, the collaboration between so many people to acquire the drug struck Barry as incredible.
"Everybody came together, and some of us had pretty small parts ... but we were proud to get it in time," Barry said. "And I thought it was pretty neat."
Alberta now a 'hot spot' for tapeworm that can cause fatal tumours in humans, study cautions
Since Martin and Haughton's son was exposed to roundworm four weeks ago, it means he is outside of the usual window for symptoms of infection to appear.
And according to Martin, he seems just fine.
"He's still doing all the wonderful things that the toddler is supposed to do," Martin said. "You can't really ask for much more."
Send it to the Chinese Communist Party headquarters and tell them it is a traditional Amerindian medicine that if taken twice a day, every day, will turn you into the Perfect Communist Man.
Dang.
:(
They have socialized medicine.
Same thought here.
Common vet med everywhere.
We probably will too, if the Demoncrats get their way.
LOL
I know it was a miserable time. All of our underwear had to be boiled, the sheets had to be boiled, and we had to take some nasty medicine. There were four of us all two years apart. The doctor told Mom that pinworm eggs were so tiny that they could go through the pores in our feet.
Just a guess on my part; I imagine that the company has judged that it would not be profitable to get the drug approved in Canada.
It is probably just as true in Canada as in the US, it cost a lot of money to get drugs approved.
If you won’t sell enough of the drug to recoup the cost of approval you don’t seek approval.
The Left is always after Federal control of drug prices. Well, here is an example of where that idea goes South. Necessary drugs that are not available.
But your post brings up a point not covered in the article. Was the drug available from a Veterinarian?
That's what we recommended for Covid-19 last year.
In fact, not only infected but on death's door. Then we'll treat you.
The people often exhibited bizarre behavior before being diagnosed. Has Joe Biden been tested yet?
What are they waiting for?
That stuff has been around for most of my life.
It’s SO common, you can just go get it at the farm stores.
Hope the kid survives his country’s screwed up politics.
I can’t imagine any vet anywhere who doesn’t have it.
Yeah, it’s a challenge. But unlike you, people have always liked being around me, so I was able to marry up. You wouldn’t understand the concept.
Heartworming story?
I have a little raccoon I named Hoover that has started coming out in daylight to eat the bird food I sprinkle on the ground. Usually I would catch him climbing up my feeder at 1 AM. Now he is bold as he knows where the good stuff is every day and I see him most afternoons for a bit.
He Hoover’s up all the peanuts and then starts on the sunflower seeds. All “no mess” food so he doesn’t even have to shell anything.
He is so cute. I can’t even chase him off. I didn’t know they could carry such parasites either but really it isn’t surprising.
You see what this says about the Canadian Health Care System that our leftist/socialist Democrats have wanted us to emulate?
LOL! I am looking forward to the transgender movies about to be made.
One of them will certainly win the Oscar!
They had to get special permission for the script.
That would put the case on the radar of the health authorities.
If they got the drug from a vet and got caught you can bet that there would be legal repercussions.
But their child at least would be alive and free of brain damage.
I swallowed a coin when I was a child. My poor dad had to put on gloves and look through my poop, which I had deposited in a bucket, for a couple of days until he found it. LOL!
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