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  [33]Calgary

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 been exposed to
  roundworm after eating 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.

Social Sharing

Potentially life-saving meds not authorized in Canada delivered with time to
spare

  [34]Hannah Kost · CBC News · Posted: Jun 19, 2021 11:48 AM MT | Last
  Updated: June 19
  Raccoons can carry a deadly form of roundworm, and the eggs live in
  their feces. When a one-year-old boy in Lethbridge, Alta., ate raccoon
  feces found in a flower pot, his parents rushed to find a treatment.
  (Wilfredo Lee/The Associated Press)
  (BUTTON)
  comments

  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 [35]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.
    * [36]Wildlife expert warns of dangerous raccoon infection

  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.

  This signalled the delays to come.

  "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.
    * [37]The life-saving medicine she needs is cheap, common and
      unavailable in Canadian pharmacies

  Script Pharmacy in Calgary responded.

  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."
    * [38]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."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  [39]Hannah Kost

  Online Journalist/Associate Producer

  Hannah Kost is an award-winning journalist from Calgary, Alta. She
  joined the CBC in 2019 as an online journalist and associate producer.

  With files from CBC's Calgary Eyeopener
  [40]CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|[41]About CBC News
  (BUTTON) Report Typo or Error

Related Stories

    * [42]Alberta now a 'hot spot' for tapeworm that can cause fatal
      tumours in humans, study cautions
    * [43]Wildlife expert warns of dangerous raccoon infection
    * [44]The life-saving medicine she needs is cheap, common and
      unavailable in Canadian pharmacies

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