A two-year-old boy was rushed into life-saving emergency surgery after swallowing eight huge needles that had been used to inject cows on a farm.
The boy’s mum explained that she had taken him with her to her work on a farm in the hamlet of Ramon Castilla, in the Campanilla district of the province of Mariscal Caceres, in Peru, because she is a single mum and had no one to look after him.
But the tot, who is at the age when children crawl and put things in their mouths, swallowed eight needles that had been used to inject cattle on the farm.
The lad was then rushed to hospital where astonished medics were able to locate the needles in his abdomen thanks to an X-ray.
They performed life-saving surgery, removing all eight of the needles, including two that were found quite deep inside the boy’s digestive system.
The mum, not named in reports, said: “I didn’t realise because I was focused on my work.
“Sometimes children put anything in their mouths when they crawl or when they begin to walk.”
Dr Efrain Salazar Tito, a surgeon at the Dos de Tarapoto hospital, where the operation took place, said that it took him and his team hours to painstakingly remove each needle from the toddler’s body.
He said: “Getting them out cost me a little, but we did it with the support of the Lord, we even managed to get the bottom ones out.”
The child is currently in hospital recovering from his ordeal.
Local media reported that they had referred the matter to the police to investigate, as they could not comprehend how the lad had managed to ingest so many of the needles and suspected the child may have been mistreated.
The investigation is ongoing.
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: Central European News
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