Greater Manchester Mum Dies After Being Injected With £20 ‘Skinny Jab’
When it comes to cut-price surgery and cosmetic injections, if the price is too good to be true – it usually is. Sadly, we have to report on yet another senseless death in the case of a mother from Salford, Greater Manchester this week.
Karen McGonigal, 53, died just days after she was illegally administered a dose of semaglutide, a weight loss drug.
Karen’s daughters claim their mum was ‘desperate’ to lose weight following the end of a long-term relationship, but when she was unable to get Mounjaro (the king of anti-obesity drugs) on the NHS, she turned to the black market instead.
Daughter Abbie McGonical told ITV News: “She didn’t feel happy in herself, she didn’t want to go out anywhere. I think she just wanted her old self back – she wanted to lose weight to get her confidence back.”
You need to have a BMI of 40 or more and at least four of the following confirmed diagnoses of hypertension, sleep apnoea, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypercholestorolemia in order to get ‘miracle’ weight loss jobs on the NHS. Unfortunately for Karen, she didn’t qualify.
The mum was told by friends that Mounjaro was available to buy at a local beauty salon. She got in touch with a beautician at the salon, who sent a text offering the jabs for £20 each.
Karen visited the salon a number of times for what she was told were legitimate licensed injections. Of course, they weren’t, because weight-loss injections can only be legally (and safely) dispensed with a prescription from a healthcare professional – like a doctor or a pharmacist.
Karen’s youngest daughter, Ffion, said the beautician ‘stopped doing a woman’s nails’ to take Karen into a back room where she was injected with a syringe.
Fion told ITV News: “No preparation, no cleaning, nothing. She’d give it to my mum, my mum would pay her and she’d be out in three minutes.”
Karen did indeed begin to lose weight, but four days after her last injection, she fell ill and was in ‘agony’ with severe stomach pains and was struggling to breathe. When daughter Ffion saw her mum’s face turn ‘purple’, she called an ambulance.
“She got blue-lighted to the hospital. By the time I saw her again – she wasn’t awake.”
After two days in intensive care, Karen’s three daughters were told there was nothing more doctors could do, and their mum’s life support was switched off.
The family have since discovered that Karen was not injected with tirzepatide AKA Mounjaro, but rather a drug named semaglutide – a different weight loss medication, requiring a different dosage.
Further tests will determine for sure whether the unregulated weight loss injections were to blame for their mum’s death.
Karen’s family are now speaking publicly about the dangers of weight loss jobs or ‘skinny jabs’, begging others to think twice and insisting that they’re ‘really not worth it.’
Hopefully the Karen McGonigal story is enough to put other people off seeking this sort of treatment from anyone other than proper professionals. If you can’t get them on the NHS, legit weight jabs like Mounjaro cost anywhere from £100 – £300 a month from a private pharmacy. Don’t make the potentially fatal error of getting it for £20 from a random hairdresser instead.
A police investigation is underway with one person having been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and another on suspicion of supplying a ‘controlled substance.’
For the student who took how own life following a botched beard transplant by an estate agent, click HERE. Tragic.
