The boy Anthony Heitor, aged 2, had a cardiac arrest and spent a day in hospital after taking an overdose of a controlled medication in Itamaracá, in Greater Recife. He was taken by his family to the Municipal Hospital of Igarassu, also in the Metropolitan Region, and transferred by helicopter to Hospital da Restauração, in the center of the capital of Pernambuco (see video above).
In an interview with g1, the boy's mother, Maria Hozana Silva Fagundes, said that he has autism and epilepsy and took the medication without anyone seeing after she left to get lunch. The child felt unwell on Friday morning (6) and was discharged late on Saturday afternoon (7). According to the family, Anthony took a dose 36 times higher than recommended.
— Maria Hozana Silva Fagundes, mother of Anthony Heiror
The medication that Anthony took has periciazine as its active ingredient, a substance indicated for agitation and irritability. According to Hozana, he uses this medicine to sleep, in dropper format. According to her, the boy had stayed at home with his older sister, a 13-year-old teenager. He took the medication around 11am.
"I gave him a bath and said this (to his daughter): 'it'll take 20 minutes, I'm going to get lunch here at the edge of the track, leave the doors closed so he doesn't go into the water tank'. He found the medication and, when she saw it, he had already taken more than half of a bottle. It's a medicine he takes every day, but he only takes six drops", he stated.
According to his mother, Anthony has picacism, an eating disorder that causes people to ingest non-food or nutritious substances.
"He eats soap, if it's easy. He's had this syndrome since he was young. So, for him, the medicine isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. Everything that burns is bad for us, but it's good for him. [...] I'm always very active, I don't leave these things easy and suddenly he found the medicine that I didn't know where it was, I'm moving house", he explained.
Hozana said that when her teenage sister saw that the boy had taken the bottle, she called her, who rushed back home and found the boy still awake. The mother asked for an app car and the two went to Igarassu Hospital.
"I flew to Igarassu, to the emergency room there. When I arrived, he was already unconscious. By the time I arrived, they had already picked up my son, taken him straight to the Red Room, washed him, tried to remove everything that was inside him, but it had been more than an hour since he had taken the medication. After he got 'doped', he got worse. He wouldn't open his eyes anymore and wasn't responding. Then they had to intubate him", said.
Anthony Heitor, aged 2, was hospitalized after taking an overdose of prescription medication in Itamaracá, Greater Recife — Photo: Personal collection
Helicopter transfer
According to the boy's mother, after intubation, the medical team decided to transfer the patient and found a place in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Hospital da Restauração, located about 30 kilometers from Igarassu, in the Derby neighborhood, in the central area of Recife.
To carry out the transfer, the Mobile Emergency Care Service (Samu) was called, but as traffic in the region was very heavy, the institution requested a helicopter from the Federal Highway Police (PRF) to transport the boy.
"They couldn't take me, because he was unwell and there was no space for me with him. I went back to the hospital and they took me by ambulance to where he was, to the HR", detailed Hozana.
The flight started at around 3:40 pm and lasted six minutes until disembarking at Campo do Derby, which is a few meters from Hospital da Restauração. At night, around 8pm, the boy was unintubated.
"They sedated him a lot at Igarassu Hospital and he was also sedated there at HR. But he was responding to the sedation, he wasn't able to stay fully sedated. He was trying to exert a lot of effort with his feet, with his hands, trying to scream, he just couldn't move his head or open his eyes. They decided to try to unintubate him so he wouldn't get used to the tube ventilation. They talked to me and I said: 'if it's for the best of my son, I accept'. He (Anthony) reacted very well to the extubation", he said.
After that, the boy slept in the hospital and woke up in the early afternoon of Saturday (7). After a few hours of observation, he was released and returned home.
"After lunch, he woke up. And he's always very strong. Thank God. He's playing. He's just a little groggy, but he's fine. Breathing 100%."
