Fake vodka and toxic alcohol substitutes have killed scores of people around Russia over the past few months, officials and media reports said.In the western Belgorod region, 44 of the 912 affected have died since July 31, said Olga Semyonova, a spokeswoman for the Belgorod regional prosecutors' office. And in the north-western city of Pskov, near the border with Estonia, at least 12 people died of toxic hepatitis and 134 remained hospitalised with the disease after drinking bad alcohol since mid-September, local health officials said. "All those people were diagnosed for toxic hepatitis caused by some alcohol liquid," Vladimir Ryabenchenko, head of the Pskov Health Committee's emergency department, told The Associated Press.
More than 550 people in the Siberian region of Irkutsk have appealed for medical assistance and, of those, 19 have died of toxic hepatitis, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Andrei Kuptsevich, the region's deputy health chief, as saying. The regional government is considering introducing a state of emergency because of the poisonings, ITAR-Tass said.