Camden News: Malaria | drug overdose | Tara Corcoran | St Mungo's supported housing

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Camden News - by SIMON WROE
Published: 9 April 2009

Woman died after taking malaria drug overdose

A MENTALLY ill woman died after taking a massive overdose of the anti-malaria drug chloroquine at a Swiss Cottage hostel, an inquest has heard.
Tara Corcoran, 55, a Help the Aged volunteer who was staying at St Mungo’s supported housing in Adamson Road, reportedly made late-night phone calls hours before her death in January asking her father and sister to pray for her.
Paramedics were called when she asked a care worker to pray for her and admitted taking an overdose.
She died at the Royal Free Hospital later that night.
Mundi De Heer, a locum project worker at St Mungo’s, told St Pancras Coroner’s Court on Tuesday that Ms Corcoran had seemed “upset and distressed” on the evening she died, pacing and chanting in the corridor outside her room.
A toxic amount of chloroquine – more than 50 times the potentially lethal dose – caused Ms Corcoran to suffer “a variety of irregular heart rhythms from which she could not be resuscitated” on admittance to hospital, said coroner Dr Andrew Reid.
Recording a verdict of misadventure, Dr Reid said that although Ms Corcoran had “a significant past psychiatric history” he could not be certain she had intended to take her own life. He added: “After taking the overdose she has presented herself to staff. Ms Corcoran need not have done that if she had wished to end her own life. The magnitude of the overdose she took was sufficient [to kill her].”

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