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Two treated for cyanide poisoning

Richard Orange
Richard Orange - [email protected]
Two treated for cyanide poisoning
Gudvanga Tunnel - Arne Med/NTB/Scanpix

Two of those caught in this week's Gudvanga tunnel fire are still suffering acute cyanide poisoning, leading to shortages of the antidote at the hospital where they are being treated, VG has reported.

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According to the newspaper, six additional packages of the antidote Cyanokit had to be rushed to Haukelund University Hospital after the blaze. 
 
Guttorm Brattebø, the head of the hospital's emergency department warned that if only slightly more people had been poisoned, the entire region would have run out of the drug. 
 
"We in the Bergen area can handle 15-20 people. If we were to have 50 people poisoned with cyanide as a result of a fire, I do not think we would have been able to find enough doses here," he told VG newspaper. 
 
Inhaling cyanide, which is released by the burning of plastics such as polystyrene, causes giddiness, headaches, confusion, breathing difficulties, and eventually unconsciousness.  
 
In large doses, it can result in seizures, coma, and cardiac arrest. The antidote, a drug called Cyanokit, costs 6300 kroner ($1000) for each dose. 
 
Some 65 people were hospitalized on Monday when a truck exploded in the Gudvanga Tunnel, Norway's second longest. 

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