New heroin alert after three deaths

Police in Birmingham are to investigate a possible link between heroin-related deaths in the city and recent similar deaths in the Republic and in Scotland.

Two young drug-users have died within 24 hours in the city and a third is critically ill. Two new cases affecting two women were also confirmed by the Greater Glasgow Health Authority yesterday. One of them died in hospital in Glasgow early yesterday.

West Midlands police have warned drug users in the Birmingham area about the possibility of a "poor-quality batch of heroin in circulation". The Birmingham health service has also put its casualty departments on alert for drug users with unusual symptoms.

Eight heroin users died in Dublin between April and June this year of an unidentified illness involving abscesses on the skin, followed by contamination of the blood and eventual vital organ failure. There were 16 confirmed cases of the illness in the Republic and 57 in Scotland. There have been no new cases in the Republic since late June.

The two dead men in Birmingham have not yet been formally named. A West Midlands police spokeswoman said an 18-year-old man had been found dead in a city-centre flat last Tuesday. A 39-year-old man found with him remains critical in the City Hospital. Early indications are they had injected contaminated heroin, she said.

At 4 p.m. on Wednesday another man was found dead at a derelict site in the Summer Hill area of the city.

Det Chief Insp Gordon Fraser said yesterday morning that early indications suggested contaminated heroin was involved in both of the deaths.

"We are warning drug users that there may be a poor-quality batch of heroin in circulation," he said. "While there is no evidence yet linking these deaths with those in Dublin and Scotland, and we are not sure whether the deaths have been caused by contaminated heroin or by very pure heroin, we will be in contact with the Irish police as soon as we have the post-mortem results back."

A post-mortem was being carried out on the 18-year-old yesterday.

A Garda spokesman said yesterday the Garda National Drugs Unit was aware of the heroin-related deaths in Birmingham but that West Midlands police had not been in contact with it.

Though the Greater Glasgow Health Authority identified a bacterium called Clostridium novyi Type A as the likely cause of the infection among injecting addicts in June, the Eastern Regional Health Authority has not confirmed the cause of the deaths in its area. It is widely accepted, however, that the deaths and those in Scotland were caused by the same contaminant.

After a meeting to discuss the new cases yesterday, Dr Laurence Gruer, consultant in public health medicine with the Greater Glasgow Health Board, expressed his disappointment at the two Birmingham deaths.

"However, in at least one the heroin used had apparently been prepared at least six weeks ago. It is likely that virtually all of the contaminated heroin has now been used up."