Sale of illicit liquor claims over 2.6 lakh lives in India every year

New Delhi/Motihari: According to the police report issued on Monday (17 April, 2023) at least 26 people have lost their lives in a suspected hooch tragedy at Motihari in East Champaran district of Bihar. According to unofficial sources, the death toll in the hooch tragedy has mounted to 38 by monday evening.

According to World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2018 global status report alcohol kills 2.6 lakh Indians every year and is the causal factor linked to more than 200 diseases.
Alcohol intake is responsible for around three million deaths every year worldwide accounting for 5.3 percent of all deaths requiring measures to curb drinking habits.

The number of hooch-related deaths has been on the rise in the country. Bihar continues to witness liquor sales on the black market and deaths owing to the consumption of locally made spurious liquor.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data 6,172 people died between 2016 and 2020 due to the consumption of illicit hooch in India. This means that 3 people on average die every single day due to spurious liquor poisoning in the country.
In the prohibition-bound Bihar, the main culprit in poisoning from hooch is the presence of large quantities of methanol. Traces of methanol are found in legally made and licensed alcoholic drinks like beer while country made liquor, when not brewed with care, can contain large quantities of methanol. Methanol is essentially a toxic industrial- standard alcohol, which is added to increase the potency of liquor.

Currently, methanol is easily available in the market, and has many industrial applications including the manufacture of varnishes among other products. As per WHO – 2020 report death of 7.7 per cent of men and 2.6 percent of women worldwide was linked to alcohol while 13.5 percent of the total deaths involving people in the age group of 20 to 39 were attributable to liquor.

World Health Organisation recent note on methanol poisoning says that “problems arise when higher concentrations are formed during incorrectly managed distillation processes, but more particularly when methanol is deliberately added to fortify informally-produced spirits and illicit alcoholic drinks”

Methanol gets absorbed in the gastrointestinal track of the person drinking it. It can also enter the system through the skin and by inhalation. Toxic effects arise from methanol metabolising in the body to first form formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde, which is thought to be a cancer-causing agent, is quickly converted into formic acid. (feature photo credit-PTI)

When large amounts of methanol enter the body with copious amounts of spurious liquor, formic acid accumulates in body tissues leading to acidosis.

Depending on the amount of alcohol consumed, the effects kick in. Often, the victims need intensive medical care.

The enzyme produced in the body blocks the receptors in the body and has a disastrous effect on the patient.
Poisoning affects all the organs of the body including the eyes, kidneys and liver.

Often a patient’s vision is often affected, and cases of severe poisoning result in blindness. Coma, convulsions, and death from respiratory arrest may ensue.

It is a matter of urgency that doctors and nurses be informed that the problem is always methanol, and that the antidote to methanol is ethanol. This may sound strange, but when a person has consumed deadly methanol, the only effective treatment is to have him or her consume as much safe alcohol (ethanol) as possible. This is because ethanol competes successfully with methanol for an enzyme in the body which breaks methanol down into various components — including formaldehyde which is what kills, blinds and cripples people. If ethanol is consumed, the methanol will not break down and will pass harmlessly from the body.

As the victims of methanol poisoning from hooch in India are generally from economically and socially backward communities, they are less equipped and hesitant to seek specialised care.

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*Dr. Narresh Purohit-MD, DNB, DIH, MHA, MRCP(UK), is an Epidemiologist, Principal Investigator for Indian Medical Academy for Preventive Health and Advisor-National Communicable Disease Control Program of Govt. of India, Madhya Pradesh and several state organizations.)