On July 29, a man in Ba Tri District held a party and invited two of his friends to join. They drank rice liquor at the event and all of them died from methanol poisoning.

On the same day, another man from Ba Tri District drank rice liquor with three of his friends. He also died due to methanol poisoning, while his friends were hospitalised.

On August 17, methanol poisoning forced two men in Ba Tri to be hospitalised after they were intoxicated for five consecutive days. They were taken to hospital in critical condition and had to use ventilators. They have seen improvement following intensive treatment.

Tests by local authorities showed that methanol levels in the rice liquor samples from the poisoning cases were thousands of times higher than permitted levels.

This rash of cases follows an incident where three women in the southernmost province of Ca Mau died from methanol poisoning. They consumed five litres of rice liquor in two days and suffered from dizziness, breathing difficulties and nausea later.

Despite being banned, methanol is still being used in rice liquor production in Vietnam.

On July 25, a rice liquor producer in the northern province of Hung Yen, Nguyen Van Quynh, 45, was sentenced to 17 years in jail in a case where three people died in 2020 after drinking homemade rice liquor which was found to contain methanol.

Source: DTinews