Nicaraguan police stepped up moonshine raids Saturday, bursting into seedy bars and liquor stores selling an adulterated cane liquor that the government says has killed at least 30 people.
Overnight, about a hundred new patients were admitted to the already overflowing and rundown public hospital in Leon, about 55 miles northwest of the capital, Managua, and the center of the epidemic, raising fears of more deaths.
Following tips from the public, police burst into bars and shops in the colonial city and seized grubby plastic barrels filled with suspected bad hooch.
Many of the bars are bare concrete rooms where the raw liquor is sold to customers who bring their own jugs or even plastic bags to hold the drink.
“Together with the police, we have confiscated 47,893 litres (12,650 U.S. gallons) of hooch from 312 establishments. We’re doing tests to see what is contaminated with methanol and what is not,” said Health Minister Margarita Gurdian.
The sale of home-distilled alcohol is legal in Nicaragua and popular in rural areas and among low-paid workers. Most of those killed were poor, although one doctor from Leon hospital died.
Miurel Gamez, regional Health Ministry director, said three additional deaths were attributed to the moonshine on Saturday, raising the official death toll to 30.
A liter (quart) of hooch, called aguardiente in Spanish, sells for about a dollar in Leon, making it much cheaper than beer or rum.
The bad batch was mixed with methanol, a poisonous type of alcohol which when ingested can cause blindness, organ damage and death from respiratory failure.
At the hospital, men and women attached to intravenous drips spilled into peeling, roach-ridden corridors from the packed wards. Others on ventilators looked close to death.
“This is an attack on the poor,” said Jose Ernesto Malta, 41, a market laborer who drank the liquor earlier in the week. ”I just hope they do something. Somebody has to pay.”
Short of medicine, nurses gave out shots of Nicaragua’s high-quality Flor de Cana rum. Ethanol contained in alcoholic drinks can be used as an antidote to methanol poisoning.
A similar methanol poisoning outbreak killed at least 120 people in neighboring El Salvador in 2000, forcing a 10-day nationwide drinking ban.
