‘Doctors thought I had a stroke after botox-like injection’

Botox-like injections are causing an outbreak of rare disease that can look like a strokeSource: Sky News

Transcript

00:00My muscles down the whole right-hand side had kind of gone.

00:03That's why they needed to rule out that it was a stroke.

00:06We still don't know what it was, really.

00:09We don't know where it's come from.

00:11We don't know how much of it is in me.

00:14I just thought Botox was Botox, and that's what I was getting.

00:17The messages I get on a weekly basis from dodgy pharmacies

00:21offering to sell me dirt-cheap toxins for ridiculous prices

00:26that aren't licensed in this country.

00:27Stephen Land runs an aesthetics clinic in Newcastle

00:31and is a qualified doctor.

00:33He says he's been warning about an outbreak for years.

00:37Because it's the Wild West and because anyone can do this,

00:40there is a lack of knowledge around what is legal, what's not legal,

00:43what is OK to be injected.

00:45So the drug dealers, for want of a better description,

00:48are preying on this lack of knowledge

00:50amongst our non-medical practitioners.