A Fairly Deadly Brew

The first victim, Petar Stanojevic, was admitted to the Nis hospital in a coma on January 28th, while his relatives brought a bottle of "lozovaca" and told the doctors that the brew might be the cause of his critical condition. The doctors did not take the warning seriously, for symptoms of methyl alcohol or methanol poisoning resemble scores of other diseases. The day after Stanojevic was admitted, Ljubisa Stankovic and Jovan Milojkovic died of alcohol poisoning in two other Nis hospitals. Another patient, Salih Zekin, suddenly went blind, but all doubts as to what might be the cause of the "epidemic" disappeared on Friday, January 30th, when an English teacher, Branislav Kitanovic, was admitted to the hospital with heart problems. Two days earlier, he treated himself and two of his colleagues to unknown quantities of the incriminated "grappa", and three patients with similar symptoms were admitted to the same hospital hours before he came in. One of them was Milijada Milojkovic, whose son Miodrag Pajovic died a few days earlier. With her was her other son, Jovan, also suffering from methanol poisoning. The doctors said they realized what they were up against on January 29th and that they duly notified the authorities, but Nis police said they reacted immediately upon learning about the situation on Friday, January 30th. The police shut down all facilities belonging to the Zivadinovic private enterprise, which produced the killer-grappa, as well as the bars, restaurants and shops selling the brew. They detained the owner, Miroslav Zivadinovic, and one of his employees Dejan Rasic. The only certainty in the whole mess is that the doctors did not inform the Nis population concerning what Zivadinovic-made grappa contained before Friday evening, when they issued a statement broadcast by local television. The same evening, one Slavka Vukaljevic was admitted to the hospital and died almost immediately upon arrival, while Sinisa Cekic lived until the next morning. He died during kidney treatment which was supposed to get the poisonous methanol out of his body. Another ten patients were admitted to the hospital over the next few hours. One of them, Radovan Ristic, died on Saturday evening.

Dragoslav Didic, an undisciplined diabetes patient, died in the Nis hospital a week before the outburst of the grappa epidemic. However, a bottle of the incriminated brew was found in his Aleksinac home a few days later, so he was officially declared a victim of methanol poisoning. The doctors also decided to re-examine the cause of death of one Petar Jankovic, who died several days earlier.

Meanwhile, the "disease" had spread across Serbia to the area of Banat in Vojvodina,.  One Smiljka Terzin died in the town of Kikinda, while two of her fellow townsmen were taken to Belgrade's VMA hospital for treatment. Veselin Muncan died in the nearby village of Novo Milosevo, his brother Zivojin is fighting for his life in the Zrenjanin hospital. Scores of people came to Nis hospital over the weekend with methanol poisoning symptoms.

As many as 18 patients were registered last Sunday, but Miroslav Nesic of Kursumlija arrived too late. He was admitted on Tuesday, February 2nd, only to be pronounced dead on arrival. He drank half a litre of grappa the day before, although his family warned him of the consequences.

All patients who were successfully treated have already been discharged, with the exception of Petar Stanojevic who is still in a coma. Most of them stayed alive because they had other things to drink along with the grappa. Methanol itself is not a poison, but it becomes poisonous when the human organism starts to decompose it. If, however, the kidneys and the liver first absorb large quantities of the more complex ethyl alcohol, the methanol won't find its way to these organs. Believe it or not, the first aid procedure applied in case of methanol poisoning is  - stuffing the victim with some quality drink!

The organism goes acid when the methanol dissolves, so the actual treatment is to neutralize the acid with sodium bicarbonate.

It is still uncertain how many lives the "gusle grappa" has claimed. Petar Krusic, for example, was found dead in his summerhouse with a bottle of the incriminated brew next to him. God knows how many people woke up with a headache and were found dead the next morning without a shred of evidence suggesting that methanol poisoning might be the cause. No one would have thought that the brew caused the death of  the first known victim, Miodrag Pajovic, had his mother, brother and three family friends not poisoned themselves with the very same brew after drinking it during his funeral! It seems that methyl alcohol poisoning has caused a number of deaths in southern Serbia over the past month or so. The head doctor in Kursumlija hospital said last Tuesday that the killer brew caused the death of four inhabitants of this southern Serbian town on January 23rd, while a local judge has asked for an autopsy of three more bodies. Slobodan Borovac, who lived alone, was found dead in his bathroom, while Zoran Radenkovic collapsed and died in a bus on Wednesday morning.

The price of the brew along with the high methanol volume played a major part in the tragedy. A litre of this so-called grappa with a 40 percent alcohol volume cost 16 dinars, while its "upgraded" version with a 45 percent alcohol volume cost 17 dinars. The same enterprise sold vodka in Vlasotince for a mere eight dinars per litre.

Like all other hand-made brews available in marketplaces and unregistered wine cellars throughout Serbia, the fatal grappa was made of industrial ethyl alcohol, obtained from tree-processing or as a side-product from sugar cane processing. When water and artificial aroma are added to the ethyl alcohol, the brew still needs an extra "something" to taste like "real grappa". A large quantity of methanol is added to the brew, which is then diluted with pure ethyl alcohol. The "brand" is completed with a few drops of genuine grappa.

In order to get a licence for this kind of business, one must first recruit a qualified supervisor. The Zivadinovic enterprise employed Bozidar Stojkovic, a technologist of the Sicevo agricultural company. Last October, Stojkovic quit as Zivadinovic's supervisor for unknown reasons, but his boss had failed to find a proper replacement to this day. He told the authorities that he was looking for another supervisor through a newspaper advertisement, but it seems that no one was interested in taking the job. Zivadinovic continued with production and appointed his associate Dejan Rasic, a locksmith by trade, as the new supervisor. Rasic said at the hearing that his boss, Miroslav Zivadinovic,  had instructed him to blend 315 litres of methyl alcohol with 150 litres of vine distillate and to add enough water to produce a brew containing a thousand litres. He admitted he got his figures wrong once, which resulted in a brew with a 98 percent methanol volume, a bottle of which was recently found and seized in Zrenjanin. The deadly grappa was made of 2,200 litres of brew that Zivadinovic had bought from the AMB enterprise of Zrenjanin. He said he was convinced that he had bought ethyl alcohol, but it is now quite obvious that he had purchased methanol.

In order to start selling the brew, one must first test it at one of the three authorized health protection institutes. One of them is based in Zivadinovic's home town of Nis, but he failed to get clearance for selling his lethal brew. He said at the hearing that he had tried to test the brew at the Malca agricultural company near Nis, but the managing director told him to try elsewhere because their laboratory wasn't good enough. Zivadinovic had no time to waste, so he decided to step up the production and start selling. The enterprise has produced around 40 thousand litres of various spirits.

In the last few days, police confiscated around 16 thousand litres in Nis, four thousand litres in Banat, three thousand litres in Backa and 7,500 litres in Jagodina. All of it has been sent to the Vrsac laboratory, where the brew will finally be tested.

Meanwhile, Nis police have detained two agricultural inspectors for questioning. The authorities announced Tuesday that police arrested an  agricultural inspecting chief, Lepoja Spasic, and his two associates Borivoje Dokic and Marica Zivkovic. They have been charged with inadequate supervision of the activities conducted by the Zivadinovic private enterprise, which led to endangering the health and lives of Nis inhabitants. The investigating judge, Miloje Micic, said he had reasons to believe the criminal act was done with intent. Also arrested was president of the AMB enterprise Andjelko Bitevic, for "putting into circulation a dangerous substance without testing it and obtaining a valid licence".

As paradoxical as it may seem, it is a fact of that the poorer the Serbs get, the more they drink. It is also a fact that methyl alcohol has claimed about fifty lives since the all-round crisis broke out earlier this decade.

 Rumours have it that Miroslav Zivadinovic, reportedly a former police officer, obtained the money for producing the brew by manufacturing beverages, using the same method and just as dangerous substances. The labels on his beverages had tiny letters suggesting that a person weighing 70 kilograms or less should never drink more than two litres a day, but he nevertheless carried on with the business, for the same reason many other Serbian poisoners did: money. There was no one to stop him, for Serbian inspectors are prepared to turn a blind eye on so many things for money. After all, money makes the world go round. The state authorities, on the other hand, would probably never pay them enough to do their job properly. Why would the authorities do a thing like that if they can make far more money by collecting their share of the bribe? So what if a tiny section of their own population were to pay the price with their lives, for death is a very profitable business too. There will probably be no trial, even if the investigation finds that Miroslav Zivadinovic was himself a victim of ruthless competition which sold him methanol instead of ethyl alcohol to get him out of the picture.

The tragedy has been marked by pathetic efforts on the part of the authorities to wash their hands clean of all responsibility. We have seen that it takes a day to make a telephone call from the Nis hospital to the local police station one block away. Doctors of Belgrade's VMA hospital were surprised that their colleagues in Nis had asked for only two litres of sodium bicarbonate for all patients, although the standard amount used is five litres per poisoned victim. Doctors in Nis, would you believe it, said this wasn't true, adding they had asked for a total of five litres and complained for receiving only three and a half !

The exact number of people poisoned by the lethal brew is still unknown, as hospitals in central and southern Serbia are not used to reporting the situation to the VMA intoxication control centre in Belgrade when mass poisoning occurs. Officials in the centre, on their part, said that the Serbian health service is too disorganized to deal with cases like that, one of the reasons being that future doctors are not taught all that much about clinical toxicology in the early stages of college. Isn't the centre supposed to help out doctors in the field? "We will help them if they ask us to", we were told by VMA officials.

Republican authorities needed a week or so to sort out who is to blame for the fact that poison was sold as drinks in department stores throughout Serbia, for sanitary inspectors check the biological and chemical standards of food products only. Financial inspectors, on the other hand, supervise only whether trade is legal, which led everybody to the conclusion that the agricultural  inspectors are to blame. It is really hard to imagine that one can possibly watch all this and remain sober.