Increase in Alcohol Poisoning Victims: 12 Dead in Two Days; Two Arrested

Following reports over the past two days of deaths and poisonings due to homemade alcohol consumption in at least two cities in Iran, ILNA news agency reported on Friday, October 6, that the number of victims has risen to 12. This news agency quoted Pirhossein Kolivand, head of the Civil Defense Headquarters of the Iranian Ministry of Health, stating: "So far, 154 people have been poisoned and 12 have died from methanol alcohol consumption in the country." The victim statistics for this alcoholic beverage were reported by two news agencies, IRNA and ISNA, as eight and ten respectively. Reports in this regard began on Thursday afternoon, October 5, with a death toll of six and around 30 people poisoned. ISNA reported on Thursday, quoting the head of the educational and research treatment complex "Prophet Muhammad" in Bandar Abbas, that from Wednesday night, October 4, until Thursday afternoon, 22 people had referred to this center due to alcohol poisoning. However, this number of poisoned individuals has risen to over 150 in the past 24 hours. According to Fatemeh Noorouziyan, the director of public relations and international affairs at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, "Some of these alcohol consumers have experienced blurred vision and also suffered kidney loss and require dialysis." In this context, on Friday morning, the official IRNA news agency reported the arrest of "a couple" on charges of producing homemade alcohol in this case. According to the report from IRNA, quoting the social deputy of the Hormozgan police command, "This couple used additives and other materials in the preparation of homemade alcohol." This is not the first time that the consumption of counterfeit or homemade alcohol has claimed victims in Iran. Last year, an official from the Iranian forensic organization reported the death of 153 people in the year ending in 96 due to drinking counterfeit alcoholic beverages and announced that the drinking age in Iran has reached 18 years. According to ISNA, Mohammad Reza Ghaderzadeh, secretary of the drug research working group of the forensic organization, stated in October 96 that the consumption of alcoholic beverages in Iran has "shown a creeping upward trend."