While Libyans were busy with the successive political developments and the conflicts  following the contentious political isolation bill, over 50 people died from alcohol poisoning early last month. Victims drank locally made alcohol with a high percentage of methanol and raised many assumptions and questions about the reason, the real perpetrator of this heinous crime, and the role of the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ministry of Interior (MoI) in this case.

Not unprecedented

While Libyans were busy with the successive political developments and the conflicts  following the contentious political isolation bill, over 50 people died from alcohol poisoning early last month. Victims drank locally made alcohol with a high percentage of methanol and raised many assumptions and questions about the reason, the real perpetrator of this heinous crime, and the role of the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ministry of Interior (MoI) in this case.

Not unprecedented

This incident is not the first of its kind; it was preceded by other ones that resulted in the death of dozens at Tripoli Central Hospital months ago, and at Zawiya, Zahra, and other hospitals at the end of last year. The government has made no statements explaining what happened.

Although a Libyan TV station, through a program broadcast in December 2012, warned of even greater damages in case the government did not take the appropriate measures to avoid an impending disaster— due to the spread of poisoned locally-made wines— the administrators of the hospitals said nothing about the news since they considered it a taboo topic that could not be announced in a conservative Muslim society; thus, the news of this case did not spread.

There were 1,066 cases, according to the Minister of Health’s announcement before the General National Congress; 101 of them died while the rest suffered kidney failure or clinical death or lost their sight. The media then started talking about the incident in an unscientific manner, confusing ethanol with methanol since both have the same appearance and smell, which was the reason for the numerous assumptions about the reason and the culprit.

Ethanol is an organic nontoxic compound used in alcoholic beverages up to a percentage of 45%, which is fast absorbed by the human body through the intestines, transferred to all organs and tissues through blood, and eventually transformed into carbon dioxide and water. Methanol, on the other hand, is a toxic chemical that, when digested, is metabolized into formaldehyde and then to formic acid, a severely dangerous compound that starts a group of reactions whose outcomes begin to appear after a few hours to a few days when the poison reaches the blood and then different parts of the body, causing blindness, kidney problems and even death.

Open questions

Is it a conspiracy to kill the youth of Libya? Or is it an attempt by some hardliners to punish wine drinkers? Or is it due to ignorant alcohol traders who want to achieve quick wins? And where do traders get methanol mixed with ethanol?

MoH and MoI have not answered these questions yet. The Minister of Interior only said that some perpetrators were arrested and they would be presented to the media, which has not happened yet and those responsible for selling the methanol mixed with ethanol to local traders have not been identified.

Besides, information was revealed only after Doctors Without Borders sent toxicologists and emergency medicine experts from Norway and Estonia to Tripoli in order to provide MoH with technical assistance, train the medical staff at Tripoli Medical Centre and Tripoli Central Hospital and improve their diagnosis and treatment skills.

The world’s largest ever

Those experts reported that the cases of methanol poisoning are not familiar, but occur from time to time in some countries where the cheap methanol-ethanol mix is sold on the black market as an alcoholic drink.

They suggested that the world’s largest ever methanol poisoning was in Libya, followed by Nicaragua in 2006 with 801 poisoning cases and 48 deaths. There was a similar case in Ecuador in 2011 with over 770 poisoning cases and 51 deaths.  Methanol poisoning cases have occurred in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Indonesia, Kenya, India, Norway, The Czech Republic, China, Bangladesh, Estonia, among other countries.

Surprisingly, despite the occurrence of previous cases, MoH was not ready for the disaster. It did not even issue statements to warn against alcoholic poisoning, and provided hospitals with neither rapid diagnostic materials, “S-Formate”, which should be available when methanol poisoning cases happen, nor Fomepizole, which is very useful when disasters with large numbers of victims strike, since this drug is very effective and can save patients if early hospitalized.

It has been also revealed that the number of kidney dialysis machines in every hospital is limited and there are even no toxicology or emergency medicine departments at the Libyan hospitals.

Blaming the victims

That the bulk of the views of those who talked about this issue through the media put the whole blame on the victims whom they described as perverts and violators of Sharia by drinking wine, which led them to the state they were in – though an Islam tolerance-damaging point of view – was perhaps why the officials feared even to sympathize with victims.

While those who drank poisoned wine that made them enter hospitals lacking the simplest requirements of diagnosis and aid are fully entitled to punish those who deceived them and also those who neglected their treatment, officials place blame on the victims.