AREQUIPA, Peru – Alcohol consumption causes 2.6 million deaths each year in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned in a report this Tuesday.
The UN agency highlighted that the mortality rate fell slightly, but remains “unacceptably high.”
Likewise, it points out that alcohol consumption is attributable to one in 20 deaths in the world each year due to traffic accidents, dependence problems and cardiovascular diseases, cancer or cirrhosis.
The report based on data from 2019, the latest statistics available, estimates that 2.6 million deaths in the world that year are attributed to alcohol consumption and that men represent almost three quarters of the deaths.
“Substance use seriously harms a person’s health, increases the risk of chronic diseases, mental health problems and unfortunately causes millions of preventable deaths,” said WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement.
The WHO highlighted that there has been “some reduction in alcohol consumption and related harms worldwide since 2010”, but that the social consequences and burden on health systems “remains unacceptably high”.
The report reveals that young people are disproportionately affected and that the most affected group, which corresponds to 13% of deaths, is people between 20 and 39 years old.
Alcohol consumption is linked to diseases such as cirrhosis and some cancers.
Of the total deaths attributable to alcohol in 2019, 474,000 were due to cardiovascular diseases and 401,000 to different types of cancer.
Dependence on this substance also makes people more susceptible to catching infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV or pneumonia.
Globally, an estimated 209 million people suffered from alcohol dependence in 2019, 3.7 percent of the world’s population.
The region with the highest per capita consumption rate is Europe, followed by the Americas.
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2024-06-26 20:09:53
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