Geneva: The World Health Organisation said on Tuesday that alcohol consumption kills around three million people annually, Agence France-Presse reported.
Though the United Nations health organization admits that the death rate from drinking has fallen slightly in recent years, it still remains “unacceptably high”. It said that nearly one in 20 deaths globally each year is out of drinking. It could be drink-driving, alcohol-induced violence and abuse and alcohol-born diseases and disorders
WHO’s latest report suggests that 2.6 million deaths were attributed to alcohol consumption in 2019, which is the latest available statistics. This accounts for 4.7 per cent of all deaths worldwide. Also, around three-quarters of these deaths were in men.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the use of alcoholic substances severely harms individual health by increasing the risk of chronic diseases and mental health conditions and tragically results in millions of preventable deaths every year.
However, he pointed out that there has been some reduction in alcohol consumption since 2010. But the health and social burden due to the use of alcohol remains unacceptably high, he said. He added that young people were disproportionately affected.
WHO said that the highest proportion of alcohol-attributed deaths in 2019 was among those aged 20 to 39, which was 13 per cent of such deaths.
Of all deaths attributed to drinking in 2019, around 1.6 million were from non-communicable diseases. Out of these, 4,74,000 were cardiovascular diseases, 4,01,000 were cancer, and an enormous 7,24,000 were from injuries due to traffic accidents and self-harm, the report stated.
Further, WHO warned that alcohol abuse makes people susceptible to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV and pneumonia.
The report then said that around 209 million people across the globe, or 13 per cent of the global population, lived with alcohol dependence in 2019. However, the total per capita consumption worldwide decreased slightly, reaching 5.5 litres in 2019 than 5.7 litres nine years before.