BENGALURU: With liquor getting expensive under the Congress-led government in Karnataka, doctors have cautioned citizens about the harmful effects of consuming spurious liquor and urged them to buy only from licensed shops.
Dr Parvesh Kumar Jain, Professor and HOD, Department of Medical Gastroenterology at the Institute of Gastroenterology Sciences and Organ Transplant, Victoria Hospital, said cases of people affected by the consumption of illicit liquor have gone up after a spike in prices.
Most often, such incidents are seen among the low socio-economic groups who consume alcohol almost daily. Since many of them are daily wage workers, they prefer cheap alcohol to fulfil their daily dose when they are short on cash. Highlighting difficulties in identifying such patients, Dr Jain added that most of them are from rural parts and are taken to nearby government hospitals for immediate medical assistance.
Unlike branded liquor, spurious liquor is made without any quality checks and contains methanol, a different form of alcohol that is highly toxic for humans. If the alcohol is not distilled properly, it might end up producing a high amount of methanol which can cause cerebral edema, permanent or reversible blindness, bleeding and death, Dr Jain explained.
Properly distilled alcohol contains differentiated amounts of methanol which is also not good for health, but has an adverse impact over a long period, unlike spurious liquor which shows immediate effects. A person suffers from vomiting, dizziness or abdominal pain within hours of consuming it.
Physicians from Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bengaluru, which also has a high patient footfall of liver damage cases caused due to extensive liquor consumption, said it is common as people are addicted to alcohol. Even if they don’t have money to buy a branded bottle, they end up settling for a cheaper bottle and not thinking about the adverse impacts on their body.
Both Bowring and Victoria Hospital see around five and 20 patients respectively, daily, suffering from alcohol-related health issues. Doctors also asked the government to take stricter measures to ensure that all illicit liquor shops are tracked down in Karnataka.
They said it is a law and order situation and the state must take measures to avoid deaths due to the consumption of spurious liquor.