With clock ticking, doctors, pharmacists come to the rescue after 1-year-old eats raccoon feces
A southern Alberta couple who realized their infant had eaten raccoon feces found themselves racing against time to find a rare medication тАФ┬аand doctors and pharmacists across Western Canada mobilized to help them find it.
Ashley Haughton learned raccoon scat┬аcan 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┬аand invade organs, including the eyes and brain.
And so┬аwhen her one-year-old son ate raccoon feces from a flower pot in the garden just over four weeks ago, Haughton┬аknew 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┬аcalled┬аtheir family┬аdoctor and the province’s Poison &┬аDrug Information Service.
Both advised the parents to wait and see if their son тАФ whom they didn’t want to name in order to protect his privacy тАФ developed symptoms of infection.
Instead, the parents sought to have the┬аfeces 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┬аtheir son to a hospital emergency room, they were prescribed┬аalbendazole,┬аwhich needs to be taken within three days of exposure.
Special authorization to write the prescription was given by Health Canada, as its┬аmanufacturer┬аhas not filed a drug submission in Canada, the department┬аtold CBC News.
This┬аsignalled┬аthe delays to come.
“We started calling around … to try and track it down┬аand 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┬аgot the call that Martin was looking for┬аalbendazole┬аand why, he immediately understood the┬аdire predicament.
“I’ve got young kids, and I couldn’t imagine being in that situation,” said Barry, who works at Shoppers Drug Mart in┬аPark 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┬аstarted contacting his network.
When a drug is not widely available, a┬аcompounding pharmacy can prepare personalized medications for patients by mixing individual ingredients together in the exact strength and dosage required.
Barry’s friend, Dawson Bremner,┬аhad opened a pharmacy in Vancouver that┬аhad many suppliers outside of Canada┬аand was doing a lot of compounding тАФ 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.
Script Pharmacy in Calgary responded.
It had not compounded the anti-parasitic formula in more than┬аa 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┬аco-owner and pharmacist Aleem┬аDatoo.
“[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 тАФ but on our end, it had been a total team effort.”
Martin and┬аHaughton, meanwhile, were preparing┬аto drive to Montana to get the drug when they┬аlearned 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,┬аMartin and┬аHaughton’s┬аson received his first dose of┬аalbendazole.
And from the hospital doctors to the┬аveterinarian to a chain of pharmacists,┬аthe 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.”
Since Martin and┬аHaughton’s┬аson was exposed to roundworm four weeks ago, it┬аmeans 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.”
