Poisons Unit launches 24-hour hotline

by Carol Aloysius

The Toxicology Unit of the National Hospital Sri Lanka, has introduced a 24-hour hotline service for those seeking advice on poisoning.

“We launched this new service on January 1 to fill a long-felt need.

As the oldest Poisons Unit in South Asia, we were keen to set up this hotline for the past several years, since the present hotline is open only during office hours, 8.am - 4 p.m. Our chief obstacle was finding adequate staff to man the hotline. With the new hotline which will be open day and night we could provide our clients a better service”, a spokesman for the Unit told the Sunday Observer.

He said the hotline would be manned by qualified medical personnel and researchers from the Toxicology Unit. As we now have access to the most updated Poisons Information Services worldwide, they could pass on information on all sorts of poisons – from plant, chemical, environmental and snake poisoning to heavy metal poisoning. Medical personnel who are not familiar with these poisons and do not know how to treat them, lay persons and even students who write on poisoning and families of those who have attempted suicide can benefit from our new service”, he said.

The hotline number is 2886143