While holiday makers are excited to be making their way to their Sumer holiday destinations Australian doctors are warning visitors to the island of Bali to be very vigilant when it comes to consumption of alcohol.
Australian doctors have embarked on training Indonesian doctors to identify methanol in people who may have consumed the deadly chemical.
Bali is one of the places that has been the source of alcohol poisoning of tourists with many fatal results. People in Bali are making alcohol illegally at home and this alcohol is being cheaply and incorrectly made and laced with methanol. This alcohol is then sold to unsuspecting tourists.
Methanol is used in jet fuel and as radiator coolant and is deadly when consumed.
Bali is a favourite tourist destination for one million Aussies and these tourists need to be aware of the risk of methanol poisoning which doctors fear is increasing. Methanol ingested is absolutely deadly, most sufferers do not survive.
This post from Yahoo explains,
Dr Mark Monaghan is a toxicologist at Fremantle Hospital and has travelled to Bali with the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre to run toxicology workshops this week with 300 Indonesian medical staff at the Sanglah Hospital in Denpasar.
He says it’s impossible for drinkers to know they’re consuming methanol.
“You get intoxicated the same way, you won’t notice while you’re drinking it, (but) you’ll certainly notice when you’re getting sick from it,” he says.
And it doesn’t take much – half a millilitre per kilo for the drinker, which equates to 30 or 40mls, or about half a glass.
“It’s absolutely lethal,” Dr Monaghan says.
“You can end up with a permanent brain injury if you don’t die, or blindness.”
Source: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/19220481/bali-schoolies-face-methanol-menace/
Early this year in January a 19 year old holiday maker in Lombok died after drinking methanol laced alcohol which he thought was vodka and lime. And again last week another young traveller returned from Bali to Oz with severe visual problems after drinking alcohol laced with methanol. Visual impairment is one of the first signs of alcohol poisoning and sufferers usually go blind.
Medical professionals in Oz have urged the Indonesian government to act. Indonesians need to be educated about just how dangerous methanol is. Indonesians are making alcohol illegally in an effort to make money because the taxes on imported spirits are extremely high.
The following excerpt from the post explains how methanol poisoning needs to be dealt with:
The treatment for methanol poisoning is surprisingly counter-intuitive – victims need to be given ethanol, or more alcohol, as it’s metabolised by the body before methanol and stops the formation of formic acid, which causes blindness.
But because ethanol slows the metabolism of methanol, it can be two or three days before symptoms of poisoning occur, which is why it’s hard to know just how many cases there are, with many going unreported or unattributed.
And Ms Brown says convincing hospitals in predominantly Muslim areas such as Lombok to keep ethanol on hand to treat those poisoned can be a challenge.
“There’s a cultural resistance to admitting there’s a problem,” she says.
Source: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/19220481/bali-schoolies-face-methanol-menace/
The risk for Australians is that many of those going to Bali on holiday are young people who find the allure of cheap alcohol too tempting to pass up, especially when they are trying to have fun on a budget.
Young people going on holiday need to be educated about this problem. They should only buy alcohol from “safe” sources such as their hotel restaurant or bar. Also if alcohol seems too cheap, it may be home made and methanol laced so do not buy it, it can cause brain damage, loss of eyesight and most commonly death.