The death toll in Argentina from the consumption of adulterated cocaine in settlements near the federal capital rose to 24 on Friday night, while 23 people are still hospitalized, reported an official part of the Ministry of Health of the province of Buenos Aires.
According to the provincial portfolio, the new death corresponds to a person who was hospitalized with Mechanical Respiratory Assistance (ARM) since his admission to the hospital on February 2.
That last part, then specifies that 23 patients are hospitalized so far, of which 8 have Mechanical Respiratory Assistance.
Adulterated cocaine in Argentina: the drama experienced by the family of one of the victims who used the drug in Buenos Aires
Twelve victims of the adulterated drug died in their homes and two on public roads. Only ten deaths were registered in health centers. The ages of the victims range from 21 to 58 years.
With the health emergency averted, the focus of the case turned to the judicial inquiry statement made on Friday by the main suspect arrested, Joaquín Aquino (33 years old), alias “El Paisa”, with a drug trafficker’s record.
Another 12 arrested will be questioned, according to judicial sources cited by the state agency Télam.
Some 200 people attended hospital guards since Wednesday with serious symptoms of intoxication by a substance still unknown and used to stretch the narcotic, indicated the provincial Ministry of Health.
A mother who only identified herself as Sandra, fearful of reprisals from drug traffickers, told AFP outside the Bocalandro Hospital: “I am here supporting my 28-year-old son, wholeheartedly. He is a good son. He is a metalworker, but he is addicted. I don’t know how to help him. And we live very close to where they sell the drug. We are afraid that they will recognize us.”
That it ‘serves’ to help addicts, cry out relatives of victims of adulterated cocaine in Argentina
“It would have been a greater tragedy,” warned the Buenos Aires chief of staff, Carlos Bianco, if the authorities failed to confiscate some 400 doses of the adulterated cocaine in the Villa Puerta 8 settlement and almost 20,000 doses in the Aquino neighborhood, both in the northwestern outskirts.
The authorities admitted that the substance used to process the cocaine has not yet been determined, although “an opiate” is suspected, according to the Buenos Aires Minister of Health, Nicolás Kreplak.
The federal and provincial governments calculate that in the Metropolitan Area (the capital and surroundings, where some 13 million inhabitants live) some 250,000 doses of cocaine are sold daily.
Since the 1970s, Argentina has entered the world’s drug trafficking routes and has become a place of consumption but not of production of illicit drugs, according to government reports. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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