Global and regional impacts of alcohol use on public health: Emphasis on alcohol policies

Alcohol is a well-known risk factor for premature morbidity and mortality. The per capita alcohol consumption of the world’s population rose from 5.5 L in 2005 to 6.4 L in 2010 and was still at the level of 6.4 L in 2016. Alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) declined from 2000 to 2016 by 17.9% and 14.5%, respectively. However, these gains observed in the alcohol-attributable burden have proportionally not kept pace with the total health gains during the same period. In 2016, 3.0 million deaths worldwide and 132 million DALYs were attributable to alcohol, responsible for 5.3% of all deaths and 5.0% of all DALYs. These burdens are the highest in the regions of Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. The alcohol-attributable burden is particularly heavy among young adults, accounting for 7.2% of all premature mortalities. Among the disease categories to which alcohol is related, injuries, digestive diseases, and cardiovascular diseases are the leading causes of the alcohol-attributable burden. To reduce the harmful use of alcohol in a country, the ‘whole of government’ and ‘whole of society’ approaches are required with the implementation of evidence-based alcohol control policies, the pursuit of public health priorities, and the adoption of appropriate policies over a long period of time. In this review, we summarize previous efforts to investigate the alcohol-attributable disease burden and the best ways to protect against harmful use of alcohol and promote health.