The death-toll in Kenya from an illegal batch of alcohol laced with methanol to boost its strength reached 42 yesterday, authorities said. Victims were still coming into hospital writhing in pain, babbling incoherently, and suffering sight problems after taking the locally-brewed drink on Friday, said Wako Dulacha, medical officer for the Machakos district just south of Nairobi.

The spirit ? known as ?Power Alcohol? ? was believed to have been mixed with an excessive amount of methanol to increase its potency for local drinkers in several villages. ?It was a lady, I am told. I think she overdosed it by mistake?, Dulacha told Reuters. ?It is terrible, very traumatic. People have been coming in confused, dehydrated, with headaches. Some have experienced loss of vision.?

Illicit drinking dens selling strong, homemade brews known as chang?aa are common across the east African nation of 32 million people. There are sporadic outbreaks of poisoning, with more than 100 dying from one toxic batch in Nairobi in 2000.

In the latest incident, 21 more people died overnight, taking the total number of victims to 42, Dulacha said. Some 80 patients still remained in a bad condition, and were being treated with ethanol as an antidote.

Nine were critical, in comas, and had been sent to hospital in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, some 30 miles (50 km) north. Al least eight people were thought to have lost their sight.

?Those who lack the wherewithal are condemned to illicit concoctions brewed and distilled in the most unhygienic conditions?, the Sunday Nation newspaper said in an angry editorial on the deaths in Machakos.

Government officials promised an investigation and said those responsible would be charged with murder or manslaughter. ?We are already hunting. We have some of them?, a Machakos police spokesman said, declining to give more details.

The tragedy came days before Kenya?s parliament was due to debate lifting a colonial-era ban on traditional local drinks. Some say that prohibition, rather than combating alcoholism, drives the poor to buy the more dangerous, illicit brews sold in back streets and drinking dens across the country.