Boy loses toe in escalator accident
FIVE-YEAR-OLD’S TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE PROMPTS MOTHER TO LAUNCH AWARENESS CAMPAIGN ABOUT DANGERS OF RUBBER FOOTWEAR
Afive-year old boy who was on a holiday in Dubai lost his big toe when his foot got stuck in an escalator at a hotel, doctors and parents said yesterday.
On February 14, Stanley Wood’s rubber footwear got caught in the edge of an escalator at the hotel where the British family was staying. Stanley had come to to Dubai on February 9 with his parents Helen and Ben Wood and his sevenyear-old sister. There were preparing to celebrate Stanley’s fifth birthday on February 23.
When the boy was pulled out at the bottom of the escalator, his toe was so mangled that it could not be re-attached.
Stanley was rushed to Al Zahra Hospital, Al Barsha. Doctors there said that the injury was so horrific that the entire plantar ligament that begins in the calf muscle and ends at the big toe was pulled out along with a bit of muscle attached to it. The big toe was sliced off and the bone was exposed.
Plastic surgeon Dr Mohan Rangaswamy operated on Stanley. He covered the exposed bone with soft tissue from the injured area and grafted skin from the boy’s thigh. This will help Stanley have at least have half a toe, but he will require more surgeries in the next three months to make him more stable, Dr Rangswamy said.
“The big toe has two bones with a joint. The piece that broke off included the nail and tendon. The entire tendon got pulled out right up to the calf muscle as the force of the machine was so strong. We needed to cover the open wound with a flap. The patient was left with a bone sticking out and a large wound. It was traumatic,” he added.
The mother and son have stayed back for recuperation while the father and daughter have returned home.
The incident spurred Stanley’s mother Helen to launch an awareness campaign on her Facebook page, alerting parents to the danger of soft rubber sandals. “We thought wearing soft closed rubber sandals was safer for kids. However, when Stanley lost his toe, we realised
that there have been several lawsuits against a famous company that produces these sandals. I will go back to the UK and launch an awareness campaign to caution all parents,” she told Gulf News yesterday.
A web search about soft rubber sandals revealed several lawsuits filed against branded rubber sandal companies.
In 2012, a couple in California sued a branded rubber sandals company for $2 million (Dh7.2 million) when their four-yearold daughter’s pink sandals got caught in an escalator; she lost her little toe. In Pennsylvania, a woman filed a $7.5 million suit after her child was involved in an accident in 2008. A commission in the US revealed that one company had received 186 cases of children wearing rubber footwear who were involved in escalator injuries.