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Aussie traveller calls for major change at international airports after friend's sudden death
Aussie traveller calls for major change at international airports after friend's sudden death

Yahoo

timea day ago

  • Yahoo

Aussie traveller calls for major change at international airports after friend's sudden death

A survivor of a suspected methanol poisoning is urging authorities to adopt "scare tactics" at international airports in a desperate bid to raise public awareness over the risks of potential alcohol poisoning at popular travel destinations. Bethany Clarke lost her childhood best friend, Simone White, after the pair drank spirits poured for them at a hostel while holidaying in Laos in November 2024. Ever since, Bethany has been campaigning to get better education out there for young Australians. She believes posters and leaflets at international airports would go a long way in helping travellers make informed choices and, ultimately, would save lives. "I can't see the harm in having messaging in the majority of international airports. I just think it would be a sensible, very cost-effective idea," the Brisbane resident told Yahoo News. "People aren't reading the news... but if you're flying out of an airport, you're probably going to sit on a toilet... put posters on cubicle doors." She admits she knew little of the risks before flying to Laos, where six people died after drinking alcohol suspected to be contaminated with Methanol. Among them were 19-year-old Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles. "I would have had an inkling I shouldn't drink something homemade, but if somebody's pouring out of a bottle in a bar within a hostel setting, and you've had a look at the reviews online and no one has had a bad experience, I suppose you think, 'I'm safe', and that's the trouble," she said. Bethany has been working with other survivors and families impacted by methanol poisoning to create a video that reenacts the night she and Simone drank the alcohol in Laos, hoping to drive home how "normal" of a night it was before tragedy suddenly struck. She believes having airports and airlines opt in to easy messaging will be a quick way to raise awareness. "I can't really see the harm in getting airlines on board... They could just broadcast the message at the end of flights," she said. "This happens pretty much everywhere. It's happened in Zante, Turkey, New Mexico, Costa Rica, South Africa, India. It's a widespread issue, and it's probably easier to count the countries it hasn't happened in or impacted," Bethany said, arguing that travel companies could make an immediate and lasting impact. 🪪 Travelling Aussies issued driver's licence warning for often overlooked rule ✈️ Qantas passenger's $6,000 ordeal after worker's 'typo' in booking system 🧐 Traveller's 'nightmare' after spotting secret code on boarding pass Bethany believes the issue needs to be tackled head-on, and "scare tactics" could just be the best way to go about it. "People just think, 'Oh, that won't happen to me. Those girls were probably drinking something really dodgy looking'," she said. "I think the scare tactics are actually needed to make people sit up and think, yes, this really is a problem." Methanol is the simplest form of alcohol and its presence in home-distilled spirits can cause serious harm or death. It is closely related to ethanol, the type of alcohol normally found in beer, wine and spirits, but is much more toxic. In bad cases of methanol poisoning, drinking safe alcohol will mean your body will process the sugar-based ethanol before metabolising the dangerous methanol, buying you time to seek medical help. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.

‘Avoid at all costs': Laos poisoning survivor's message to travellers
‘Avoid at all costs': Laos poisoning survivor's message to travellers

News.com.au

time2 days ago

  • Health
  • News.com.au

‘Avoid at all costs': Laos poisoning survivor's message to travellers

Almost eight months on from the Laos methanol poisoning, one of the survivors is speaking out on how they were failed by the small Southeast Asian nation and how prospective travellers are able to protect themselves from the dangers of bootleg alcohol. In November 2024, six people died after drinking alcohol suspected to be contaminated with methanol at the Nana Backpacker Hostel in Vang Vieng Laos. Two of those were 19-year old Australians Bianca Jones and Holly Bowles. Bethany Clarke, from the UK but now living in Brisbane, was one of the lucky survivors of the poisoning; however, childhood best friend Simone White – whom Ms Clarke was travelling with at the time – was not so fortunate. Ms White's mother was faced with the tragic decision to turn off her life support after she suffered irreversible brain damage resulting from the poisoning. Speaking to NewsWire, Ms Clarke said the shortcomings of Laotian infrastructure meant travellers should carefully consider whether a visit was worth the risk. 'We can't be enticing people to go to Laos, far from it. I think our message would really be to avoid it at all costs because they can't run a thorough investigation,' she said. 'If you happen to die in Laos, there's no way that you'd get a legitimate medical evaluation and those Danish girls (Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, Freja Vennervald Sorensen, 21), they didn't even have a post-mortem because they were told that they couldn't do one because of the embalming procedure.' Ms Coyman and Ms Sorensen were found dead in their hostel room after they had reportedly been vomiting blood for 13 hours. 'We were diagnosed with food poisoning, which is completely incorrect,' Ms Clarke said. 'We weren't even displaying symptoms in relation (to that). I wasn't displaying symptoms like nausea or diarrhoea or vomiting, so I don't even know how you'd come to that conclusion. 'It's just that doctors are not trained (properly).' Ms Clarke said the severity of the incident was compounded by the victims' own inability to think and function as the effects of methanol made its way through their bodies. 'I think because my brain wasn't working, there were little red flags during that following day, but it's only afterwards that I've sort of been able to realise that I should have listened more to those. I just wasn't thinking. I wasn't able to think straight,' Ms Clarke said. 'At the kayaking experience when we were just having to lay down, we weren't able to sit up straight and paddle. That definitely should have been a red flag because that's never happened to me before, an inability to sort of move my body. 'Just really, really fatigued. And then later on, when Simone stopped breathing normally and wasn't able to look at me properly, that was also when I knew that there was a huge problem. 'I just felt completely powerless because I couldn't even think straight myself.' Now Ms Clarke is campaigning for greater awareness, education and preventive measures against similar incidents. As part of the campaigning, Ms Clarke has started a petition proposing airports display clearly visible signs, distribute leaflets and have mandatory guidance counters with information on methanol poisoning. 'I think the depth of knowledge will only really come with the formal education in schools and that's why we're trying to think of how we can do that in a way that's going to act as a scare tactic for young people,' she said. 'Whether it's some kind of video, where we can re-enact what happened in Laos and how quickly things started to deteriorate, some of the other shocking things that happened, like the Danish girls who were vomiting blood and various things like that, which no one would ever really imagine could happen after drinking shots at a hostel bar. 'I think people may even think, 'Oh, well, it won't happen to me', but if you're shown the facts and we've got pictures of those drinks and what we drank, you see it's easy to get into these situations unless you know why you shouldn't do something.'

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