JEDDAH, 11 November 2007 — The second victim in a pesticide suffocation case late last month was finally declared out of danger two weeks after the accident, according to an official of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration in Jeddah.
Welfare Officer Abdurajik Samain said Sarkia Pondusan was discharged yesterday from King Fahd Hospital, where she was confined on Oct. 26 in a case of aluminum phosphate poisoning.
Pondusan’s sister-in-law, Kalsun Handi, a 36-year-old mother of two from Zamboanga del Norte province in the southern Philippines, did not survive. She was declared dead hours after she and Pondusan were admitted to the hospital.
In an interview at her hospital bed earlier this week, Pondusan recalled that she went to the apartment of Handi and her husband Jul-anni Saleh Entuman on Oct. 25, as she usually did during her off days.
She said she and Kalsun did some general cleaning because there were plenty of dead cockroaches and bedbugs around. “Kalsun told me that she and Jul-anni applied some pesticides on the dark or hidden corners of the apartment the night before. We didn’t know that we were inhaling the pesticide because it was of the odorless type,” she said in Tagalog.
“After cleaning, Kalsun and I asked Jul-anni to drop us off at a souk (market) nearby since he was going to a basketball game. Jul-anni was going to sleep at a friend’s house that night, as was his custom whenever I came to sleep in their apartment, so my sister-in-law and I decided to shop around first,” she said.
Pondusan said it was only at dawn while they were asleep that she and Kalsun both felt difficulty breathing.
Entuman said he learned of his wife and sister-in-law’s ordeal only when he called back early that day after getting a “missed call” from his wife’s cell phone. Rushing home, he found the two slumped on the floor, vomiting. He took them to hospital but his wife died at 2 p.m that day.
Pondusan described the poisoning as a “plain accident” and warned others to be extra careful when using pesticides at home.
Welfare Officer Samain assured the families of the victims that the OWWA office in Jeddah was preparing the papers needed so that they could avail themselves of benefits provided for such kind of accident.
Samain said Consul General Pendosina Lomondot immediately instructed his staff to provide the necessary assistance to the victims after hearing of the tragedy.
