No fewer than 54 people have been confirmed dead in Peru over the past month after they reportedly consumed bottled drinks containing methanol, a toxic form of alcohol, the South American country’s health ministry confirmed on Tuesday.
The ministry revealed that it had registered 117 cases of methanol poisoning since mid-September. Of those, 54 people have now been confirmed dead.
The head of the ministry’s National Center for Epidemiology, Eduardo Ortega said; ‘It is the highest figure (of methanol poisoning) in recent years’.
Africa Today News, New York reports that on Sunday, the ministry had called on people not to consume vodka/passion fruit- and pina colada-flavored drinks sold in two-liter plastic bottles under the name Punto D Oro after tests revealed them to contain methanol, an ingredient in windshield washer fluid and antifreeze.
It warned the drinks posed ‘serious damage to the health of people who ingest them.’
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This came after dozens of intoxication cases were reported at hospitals in and around the capital Lima.
According to information obtained by Africa Daily News, New York the website of the Methanol Institute, a global trade association, ‘unscrupulous enterprises or individual’ sometimes deliberately add methanol to alcoholic drinks as a cheaper alternative to safe and consumable ethanol.
Poisoning can also occur through improper brewing of homemade alcohol, it said.
Symptoms of methanol poisoning can include: abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, breathing difficulty, blindness, blurred vision, seizures, and comas, according to the institute. Drinking as little as 25 ml (0.8 ounces) can be fatal.