Keeping children safe at home during the MCO period

Be especially alert about what your child is doing during this MCO period. — Filepic

A one-and-a-half-year-old girl was brought into the hospital's emergency department near midnight after ingesting almost a whole bottle of salbutamol (used to treat asthma). She saw the “cough” medicine being given to her sister, then later stood on a chair and reached for the medication kept in a cabinet.

This was the third accidental drug ingestion in five days. Previously, a three-year-old boy who is possibly on the autism spectrum took his uncle's pill for a chronic infection that had been left on a table. A two-year-old boy with global developmental delay picked up a bottle of loosely capped eucalyptus oil and it splashed over his face; he turned cyanotic (blue in the face), accompanied by rapid breathing and drowsiness and soon developed pneumonitis (inflammation of the lung tissue because of inhalation).