Hand sanitizer product put me in Hospital – woman

A Murray’s Village woman, who was up to press time warded at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital (MCMH), is claiming that hand sanitizer put her there.

Yvonne Jones, a security guard said she went to the Ministry of Housing on May 7 to seek assistance and a worker “throw” hand sanitizer on her hands.

She said the product had a “strong” smell and she asked the worker if the bottle had Clorox in it.

“…And she said no, is hand sanitizer that we bought …[locally],” Jones recalled.

Jones said her hands “felt funny” and on Friday May 8, she was at work and noticed her fingers “started to strip” and were turning black.

“…And then my little finger now start to deteriorate and itching me and paining me,” Jones told SEARCHLIGHT from her hospital bed on Tuesday.

She said on May 10, Mothers’ Day, she was at work but in pain and she was advised to go to the doctor, but she did not have money to do so.

Jones revealed that when she eventually was able to visit the doctor, she was given medication by a private practitioner, “but instead the hand get better, it getting worse and worse.”

She said she went back to the Ministry of Housing eight days after the incident and spoke to the Permanent Secretary Catherine DeFreitas and was told that there was no way of knowing that the sanitizer did that to her hands.

“She (DeFreitas) said she cannot accept that and is best I go to the doctor and the doctor prove is the hand sanitizer…so, I say ‘this is the last place I come’ and I feel is that,” Jones recalled.

In pain, Jones went to the Accident and Emergency Department on May 11 and was admitted. She said they told her she was a diabetic and had a negative reaction to the hand sanitizer.

“They did two bed surgery on my hand, cut off the skin because it did done start to deteriorate the finger and I learnt that I was a diabetic and that is the reason it deteriorate me so fast,” said Jones who stressed that she did not know she was diabetic until this incident.

“I can’t work. I have to be out of work. I’m a security and I roast chicken on Saturdays, and I’m stuck here… can’t pay bills,” Jones said crying.

She said no one has visited her since she has been in hospital and she will be seeking a medical report to prove that the hand sanitizer is the cause of her ailment.

“I’m in a lot of pain. I would like to get compensation. It’s real horrible,” she said while crying and noting that she has to spend her 55th birthday in hospital.

She is encouraging persons to be careful when using products of this nature as some of them, “damaging people.”

She said this is the second time that a product has damaged her as four years ago on May 6, she was eating an imported chocolate when she bit into a piece of copper and broke her teeth. She said the company who imported the chocolate paid her dentist bills, but she was never compensated.

Yesterday, Permanent Secretary DeFreitas said she would not discuss the issue on the phone. SEARCHLIGHT was unable to set up a meeting with DeFreitas.