Alcohol: A Way Of Death In Ukraine -- `White Fever' Burns As Food Prices Soar

KHARKOV, Ukraine - Alcoholics are literally dying for a drink in Ukraine, at a rate doctors say they've never seen before.

"It's because they've stopped eating. They can't afford food at today's prices," said Dr. Edward Pervomajsky, chief narcotics specialist at Kharkov's City Health Department.

Alcoholism always has been a problem here. But now alcoholics must choose between alcohol and food, between alcohol and life.

Alcohol - any form of it - often wins: vodka, local cognac, cheap wine, moonshine, even household products like cologne and aftershave.

The combination of heavy drinking and food abstinence leads to delirium tremens - a deadly state known here as "white fever." Patients lose touch with reality and fall into a state of paranoid delirium. They see demons and often are obsessed by visions of insects covering their bodies. Bodily functions fail. Kidneys malfunction, heartbeats become irregular, lungs collapse and blood flow slows. If a patient isn't helped in time, he dies.

"In the '70s and '80s, when we were teaching students about `white fever' in medical school, we used to search for case examples and rush the students, several classes at once, to the hospital when one turned up," Pervomajsky said. "Now (we see) four, five, six every day."

In 1990, Kharkov - a city of nearly 2 million with an estimated 27,500 alcoholics - had 218 cases of "white fever." In 1991, there were 359. In the first three months of this year there have been 238 cases, said Dr. Valery Guryev, head doctor at Kharkov's Hospital 15.

In about 6 percent of the cases the patients die; others suffer permanent brain damage or physical impairment.

Across Ukraine, the figures also are on the rise. In 1990, a total of 5,279 cases were reported; in 1991, 7,933; in the first three months of 1992, 10,228, according to the Ukraine Medical Institute in Kiev. Ukraine, with a population of 52 million, has an estimated 900,000 alcoholics.

"Alcoholism has always been a problem here," Pervomajsky said. "It's just that now it's taking on a more deadly twist."

In Kharkov, all patients with alcohol-related problems are taken to Hospital 15, the region's crumbling, 204-year-old psychiatric clinic.

There, doctors use a special machine equipped with a rubber cap. Cold air is blown through the cap onto the patient's head to lower his body temperature, putting him in a state of near hibernation. "That way, bodily functions slow down and death is delayed, and our medication and efforts have more time to take effect," said Guryev.

Doctors feed the patient intravenously, give him various medications to combat high acid levels in the blood, try to re-inflate collapsed lungs and stabilize the functions of other internal organs.

Sometimes, however, the patient is brought in too late or the medication fails and the patient either dies or suffers irreversible damage.

Sergei Cheryren, 41, a former factory worker, was brought in after going without food for two weeks and drinking himself into a stupor with vodka and after-shave lotion. He is alive but brain-damaged.

Lying in one of 16 beds crammed side-by-side in a smelly, dirty hospital room, Cheryren could communicate and seemed unable to understand activity around him.

Across the aisle, Sasha, a large man in his late 40s, was being fed intravenously and given oxygen through a nose tube. Both eyes were black and his face swollen. Doctors said he will live, but it was too soon to tell if he would ever fully recover.

The other beds were filled with half-dressed, mumbling, staring men, none of whom seemed completely in touch with his faculties.

Doctors at Hospital 15 said they would like to think they have already seen the worst in the "white fever" upsurge. But they doubt it - with prices as they are.

On today's market, 2 pounds of sausage sell for 180 rubles (two days' wages for the average worker); chicken for 200 rubles and a bottle of vodka for 80 rubles.

"If you buy a few bottles of vodka, there's not enough left for food," said Guryev. "As long as food prices remain so high, `white fever' will burn."