Current Affairs Despite repeated warnings bootleg alcohol claims more victims daily
In the course of the past week the outbreak of methanol poisonings from bootleg liquor has taken a heavy toll: 23 people have died and over 35 remain hospitalized, many of them in critical condition. Several have gone blind. In view of the enormous publicity the methanol crisis has received and the work of local authorities in spreading the message –how is it possible that every day more people are being rushed to hospital in critical condition and why do so many of them come late?
One of the victims who lost his sight due to the methanol poisoning, photo: CTK
News about the methanol poisonings, the symptoms and the government-imposed
ban on spirits has been filling prime-time news reports, papers and radio
programmes. Police officers have been making the rounds among homeless
people who may not have heard the message and in some towns warnings have
been broadcast via loudspeakers several times a day. It would seem almost
impossible to be unaware of the danger. Yet every day there has been news
of more people being rushed to hospital after consuming tainted alcohol. So
how is it possible that so many people are still willing to gamble their
lives – and risk going blind –for the sake of a drink. Dr. Karel
Nespor, the country’s leading expert on alcohol dependency, says that for
some the urge is simply too strong.
“Psychotropic substances induce cravings and having a craving means that these people are strongly attracted to something and their memory, their decision-making skills and their ability to forsee the consequences of their actions all sharply decrease. You can’t expect somebody with an alcohol craving to keep in mind the advice of the health ministry. Their consciousness is narrowed to the alcohol before them and their reasoning definitely suffers.”
Karel Nešpor
Despite the ban on spirits, there are still plenty of opportunities for
people desperate to get their hands on liquor. Some buy it on the internet,
others in the street and many people still have potentially-lethal unopened
spirits at home. No one knows at this point how much contaminated liquor
there is about and for how long it may continue to kill. The Institute of
Forensic Medicine in Brno is currently working around-the-clock conducting
tests on the presence of methanol in blood samples sent in by hospitals
from around Moravia. The issue has been given top priority and results are
available within 30 minutes –day or night. So far laboratory workers have
conducted over 100 tests – not just from samples of people rushed to
hospital with severe problems but from those who think they may have drunk
suspect alcohol and voluntarily turn up for a blood test. Miroslav Hirt,
the head of the institute says it is better to be safe than sorry and
points out that people have little chance of detecting the poisoning until
it is too late.
“In the early stages of methanol poisoning the symptoms are practically
non-existent. The first problems are similar to a hangover, but they tend
to appear later. The first serious indication that something is badly wrong
is loss of sight when people see what we call a snowstorm – just white
specs dancing before their eyes. By that time the poison has done
considerable damage. The reason so many people suffer heavy methanol
poisoning is that many people drink in order to get drunk. But unlike
ethanol methanol does not make you feel drunk. So people think they are in
particularly good form and just keep drinking – consuming much more than
they would normally do. That is the biggest danger in consuming
methanol-tainted liquor.”
