Four members of the same family residing in Palmira, Valle del Cauca, were poisoned after taking insecticide to, according to them, counteract the symptoms derived from covid-19.
The people, all of legal age, arrived at a clinic in the city where one of their relatives told the doctors what had happened, for which they had to apply medication and wash them patients in order to stabilize them and prevent further damage to their health.
The undersecretary of health of Palmira, Luis Fernando Parra, referred to the case and was emphatic that “self-medication can aggravate a patient’s situation and much less do it with products such as insecticides or antiparasitic agents that have not actually been shown to be effective against the covid-19. I make a call to Vaccination is the most effective method.
Beware of self-medication
Marie Claire Berrouet, toxicologist and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the CES University, warns that, as indicated by the World Health Organization, self-medication has risks for which one must be responsible.
“When a person takes a medication on their own, they must do so in an informed manner, knowing the characteristics, dosages and side effects. However, we see that this is not the case, for example, acetaminophen is taken without knowing that if you suffer from liver disease you should be more careful or that it is present as an active ingredient in other medications such as Dolex or Noxpirin”, which could trigger, without knowing it, an intoxication by exceeding the recommended doses.
According to a study published in 2017 by the Latin American Student Medical Science and Research journal, 62% of Latin Americans had self-medicated in the last three months at the time of the investigation.