Alert over deadly heroin batch laced with anthrax.

Drug and medical workers here are concerned, given previous connections between Scotland and Ireland in 2000, when 17 heroin users in Glasgow and eight in Dublin died from the same bad batch of heroin, which was contaminated with clostridium.

There are no reports yet of anthrax-contaminated heroin in Dublin, or elsewhere in Ireland. However, "people should be aware of the possibility of this batch reaching the Irish market", said Dr Des Corrigan, chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Drugs (NACD).

"This is on the basis of the previous time there was a batch of heroin which caused deaths from gangrene in Dublin and Scotland. There seems to be a market link between the two countries and the contaminated batch might make its way here."

He said the last contamination incident involved clostridium, which caused gangrene, resulting in the release of deadly toxins in the body of users. He said the virus could have been due to a "lack of hygiene" in Afghanistan, where almost all of Europe’s heroin comes from.

The HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) has sent out an alert to clinicians about the anthrax contamination. In the alert, the HPSC’s specialist in public health medicine Dr Paul McKeown said there had been 14 cases to date in Scotland, with seven deaths, of drugs users who developed systemic anthrax after exposure to suspected contaminated anthrax.

He said there had also been a single case in Germany. "This may, therefore, indicate that there is more widespread distribution of a contaminated heroin batch and that cases may yet appear in Ireland."

The HPSC said the Scottish health protection agency have drawn up pointers to assist in looking out for such cases. These are available on the HPSC website: www.ndsc.ie/hspc/A-Z/Zoonotic/Anthrax.

Source: Cormac O’Keeffe, The Irish Examiner, 18/01/2010