Hooch Tragedy: Overcrowded Kandivali hospital shifts patients to be put on ventilator support

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Nine patients have been admitted to the tertiary-care Nair Hospital. Three of them are “extremely” critical and have been put on ventilator support and six others have been critical since Thursday night and are under close observation. “The patients are suffering from giddiness, vomiting, abdominal pain. A few are unconscious, others are drifting in and out of consciousness,” said Dr R N Bharmal, dean of Nair Hospital.

Sion has three patients – two critical and on ventilator support. Nair Hospital has nine patients- three on ventilator support. KEM has four patients and Shatabdi has 22 patients, out of which six are on ventilator support.

Doctors assess that the liquor had methyl alcohol in excess, leading to irreversible damage to respiratory and other organs. “Patients are dying of respiratory failure or multiple organ failure due to methyl alcohol,” a doctor from Shatabdi Hospital told The Indian Express.

The bodies were sent to Bhagwati Hospital’s post-mortem centre for autopsy. The organs of the deceased were sent for histopathology and chemical analysis at Kalina Forensic laboratory.

Of the three medical officers conducting the autopsy, one said, “When ethyl alcohol breaks down in the body, it does not cause high toxicity. But methyl alcohol is fatal beyond a certain quantity. When it breaks down, the by-product proves toxic to the body.”

The autopsy showed the organs were in “congested” state, suggesting “overwhelming illness before death”.