President Vladimir Putin highlighted the growing problem in a televised question-and-answer session last Wednesday. According to official data, around 42,000 people are killed or disabled each year in the country from alcohol poisoning. Numerous cases have been uncovered where victims appear to have drunk alcohol-based detergents and other lethal chemicals, distributed in vodka bottles.
Deputy Health Minister Ruslan Khalfin said the consumer watchdog - the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare - is investigating the causes of the poisoning, and said "serious discussions" will soon be held on the issue at the ministry with authorities from the regions concerned.
The health ministry intends to submit a report to the government by the end of the week on mass alcohol poisoning cases in the country's regions.
Reports flooded in Monday from the consumer watchdog, regional health authorities and local administrations of mass poisoning cases in South Russia, the Urals, Central Russia, and Siberia.
In Balashov, a town in South Russia's Saratov Region, with a population of around 100,000, 113 people have been admitted to the town hospital with alcohol poisoning since October 9. Of these, three have died, the region's top health official told journalists. Alexei Sorokin said patients showed symptoms of poisoning from chemicals used as substitutes for drinking alcohol.
Two hundred and ten similar cases have been registered since September 11 in the Perm Territory, in Russia's Urals, home to 2.8 million, the local consumer rights service said. Nine of the patients have died.
Among those admitted to the hospital in the region's outbreak of poisoning cases, "147 patients have been diagnosed with toxic hepatitis," a spokesman for the service said.
In another Urals town - Kamensk-Uralsky, in the neighboring Sverdlovsk Region, with a population of 188,000 - at least three people have died of alcohol poisoning since the beginning of September. About 60 more have been hospitalized with toxic hepatitis after drinking ethanol-based glass cleaner sold as vodka.
Alcohol poisoning has claimed five lives in South Russia's Volgograd Region in the last 12 days, a local prosecutor said. Ninety-six people have been hospitalized in the region since October 18.
In East Siberia's Irkutsk Region, home to about 2.6 million, 33 deaths from alcohol poisoning have been reported in the past month, the local administration said. Of 879 cases currently registered in the region, 675 people have been diagnosed with toxic hepatitis, according to the region's health authorities.
The Irkutsk Region's administration said Monday an emergency situation had been declared in 14 regional districts.
In the Kirov Region, halfway between Moscow and the Urals, home to 1.5 million, 268 people have been diagnosed with toxic hepatitis following bootleg alcohol poisoning, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Earlier in the year, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev called alcohol-poisoning deaths a national tragedy, and urged a crackdown on illegal sales of tainted alcohol.
