Do not drink spirits if you are not ‘absolute certainty’ of the origin, says Padilha

In addition to avoiding consuming distills of uncertain origin, patients should provide detailed information to health professionals. “When (patients) they reach the unit (health), sometimes they tell their signs, their symptoms, but they do not have a specific warning: ‘I went to a place, I drank something I did not know the origin,'” Padilha said.

The minister’s expectation is that the number of cases rises after a change of protocol in care and testing. The portfolio started to guide health professionals to notify the cases as soon as possible, “in the first suspicious contact”, to map the size of the problem.

The reinforcement given by the Ministry of Health in our surveillance system is exactly in order to draw the attention of health professionals who are at the end, they are the ones who meet the cases, to increase the number of notification of suspicious cases.
Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha

Brazil tries to buy antidote from abroad

Ministry called the Pan American Health Organization to purchase hunger. According to Padilha, the government will verify “the possibility of importing directly with those who have already produced this antidote to have a kind of reserve stock”.

He pointed out, however, that pharmaceutical ethanol – the main antidote against methanol poisoning – is available in Brazil. The minister explained that this “is not the ordinary ethanol, that of drinks, much less fuels”, should be used “under supervision of the intoxication reference centers”.