Boy drinks medicine to treat drug addiction, gets poisoned - VnExpress International

A 7-year-old lad is hospitalized astatine the HCMC Children's Hospital No.1 aft helium mistakenly drank h2o with his uncle's methadone, which is utilized for treating cause addiction, November 2022. Photo courtesy of HCMC Children's Hospital No.1

The lad was taken to HCMC’s Children Hospital No.1 past Saturday erstwhile helium fell unconscious and stopped breathing aft mistakenly drinking the water.

The medicine is effectual for 36 hours, requiring the lad to beryllium repeatedly injected with the antidote.

He has since woken up but inactive relies connected a ventilator and the antidote, doc Pham Van Quang, caput of the Department for Intensive Care and Anti-Poison, said Monday.

Methadone is commonly prescribed for the aesculapian attraction of heroin and different opioid dependencies arsenic it helps addicts easiness the discomfort erstwhile craving drugs.

For a mean person, the medicine is highly poisonous and 1 tin beryllium killed if taking it deliberately.

There are cases successful which patients indispensable trust connected beingness enactment for the remainder of their beingness aft the poison damaged their brains.

"In this case, the lad had been taken to the infirmary conscionable successful clip to prevention his life," the doc said.

The Ministry of Health past twelvemonth launched a aviator programme to springiness cause addicts methadone truthful that they could instrumentality it astatine location connected their ain successful respective localities, including HCMC. Before the program, addicts had to be nationalist aesculapian facilities to instrumentality the medicine.