It’s no longer news that this coronavirus has done us strong thing. Now we’ve normalized wearing face/nose mask with all the discomfort, washing our hands regularly and having hand sanitizers ‘handy’.
But now, what was meant to be a preventive measure has become a cause of concern especially among children – talking about hand sanitizers.
Did you just ask me ‘how’? I’ll tell you.
According to data gotten from the study conducted by the French Poison Control Center, France, there’s been an alarming seven times more cases of children exposed to the hazardous chemicals (high volume of ethanol) contained in hand sanitizers between April 1st to August 24th of 2020 than the whole of 2019. If we want to look at that in percentage, that’ll be 1.3% in 2019 and a whooping 9.9% in 2020. Now that’s a lot.
The major cause of this spike in number is due to the introduction of hand sanitizer dispensers in public places. Not just that. The gel dispensers are usually at a height of 1 meter (3 feet) which is waist length of adult and actually eye length for children, especially children under 4 years who are majory affected.
In France alone, 16 children were admitted into the Paediatric Ophthalmology Hospital, Paris, last year because hand sanitizer accidentally got into their eyes compared to just one case in 2019. Just imagine what the figures will be in other countries. Of the 16, two of the kids even had to undergo surgery to transplant tissue into their cornea.
Does this now mean that gel dispensers should be withdrawn from public places? Not at all. Doctors rather advice that washing of hands with soap and water should be encouraged more; children should be more educated on the proper dispensing and use of hand sanitizers; a possible introduction of gel dispensers of children’s height in public places should be done as well as placing a cautious sign where hand sanitizers are kept.
These, they believe, will help in reducing the cases of eye accidents resulting from hand sanitizer among children.
At this point in time, we really just need to be done with this new normal and get back to our default setting, or what do you think?
