GLASGOW INQUIRY INTO 18 DRUG DEATHS

An inquiry will open in Glasgow today into the deaths of 18 people who
died after using an apparently contaminated batch of heroin.

The same batch of heroin is believed to have been responsible for the
deaths of seven drug addicts in Ireland last year.

However, the Fatal Accident Inquiry at Glasgow Sheriff Court will not
examine the Irish victims nor similar cases found in other parts of
Britain.

Spokespersons for the Department of Health and Eastern Regional Health
Authority yesterday expressed surprise at the need for the Scottish
inquiry, as the Irish health authorities are satisfied the cause of
death has been traced to a batch of heroin with a fatal bacterial infection.

Individual inquests into some of the deaths in Dublin and Wicklow also
established the cause of death as a strain of anaerobic bacterium,
know as clostridium.

More than 30 people across Britain and Ireland are believed to have
died after taking the drug, while another 50 were also affected by the
illness.

All of the victims developed serious abscesses after they had injected
directly into muscle rather than their veins.

Doctors had initially feared that drug dealers had deliberately
poisoned a consignment of heroin with an anthrax-like material.

However, a medical team based in Cardiff identified the toxic
clostridium bug as the probably source of the infection.

News of a mystery illness affecting drugs users caused widespread
panic among heroin addicts when details of the infection first emerged
last summer.

Greater Glasgow Health Board said post-mortem examinations revealed
all of the victims had died as a result of multiple organ failure.