Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
A new study has found that dosing errors in children increased during the Canada-wide shortage of pediatric fever and pain medication last year.
The study by Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto looked at the number of monthly calls to the Ontario Poison Centre (OPC) for unintentional acetaminophen and ibuprofen dosing errors among patients 18 years of age or younger between January 1, 2018, and February 28, 2023.
During the medication shortage, between August and December 2022, there was a 40 to 60 per cent increase in calls to the OPC compared to trends over the prior four years.
Margaret Thompson, medical director of the OPC, said the shortage of pediatric analgesia and anti-fever medications led to parents and caregivers using adult preparations for their children’s dosing.
“When (parents) are faced with a situation where they no longer have their usual medication; they might assume that an adult tablet, for example, was the same as a chewable pediatric tablet,” she told CTVNews.ca in an interview on Tuesday.
“They wanted to give some relief to their kids, understandably.”
During the shortage, a Toronto-based family doctor said some adult painkillers, such as acetaminophen, commonly known as Tylenol, and ibuprofen, known as Advil or Motrin, could be carefully measured for children’s dosage.
However, wrong dosing can occur due to a variety of reasons, from miscalculating the proper translation from milligrams to kilograms to using the wrong syringe size.
“Small changes in the dose may mean the difference between safe and potentially dangerous in terms of health consequences,” Jonathan Zipursky, a clinical pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and main author of the study told CTVNews.ca on Tuesday.
Zipursky, a doctor and father of two young children, said there are real consequences to administering the wrong dose to children, so parents have to be extra careful when doing calculations or consult a health-care provider for advice.
During the countrywide shortage of children’s painkillers, the OPC created a dosing guide for parents.
Zipursky said the study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), sheds some light on the importance of drug shortages, especially in vulnerable populations like children, and the importance of forecasting potential supply-demand mismatch.
However, the study only reflects a small portion of the dosing errors during the drug shortage, Thompson told CTVNews.ca adding she believed the problem was “much bigger.”
“I would expect that it’s maybe one tenth of the issue,” she said.
Thompson said not every dosing error is reported because there is no obligation to disclose them, there is a lack of knowledge about poison centres, and parents might go straight to a pharmacist or hospital rather than call.
The OPC is one of five poison centres in Canada covering 15.6 million people across Ontario, Manitoba and Nunavut. Similar to its regional counterparts, it provides telephone-based front-line service from nurses and pharmacists with specialised training in the effects of poisons seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
If you need to call a poison control centre in your area, you can find a list of locations here or you can call the national line at 1-844-764-7669.
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
The Canada Revenue Agency announced Thursday it will not require 'bare trust' reporting from Canadians that it introduced for the 2024 tax season, just four days before the April 2 deadline.
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to one of three men convicted in the brutal murders of three McDonald's restaurant workers in Cape Breton more than 30 years ago.
Calgary police shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers dealt with a distraught individual. The incident lasted almost 20 hours.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.