(Thomson Reuters) — More than three million people died in 2016 due to drinking too much alcohol, meaning one in 20 deaths worldwide was linked to harmful drinking, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
More than three-quarters of these deaths were among men, the UN health agency said. And despite evidence of the health risks it carries, global consumption of alcohol is predicted to rise in the next 10 years.
“It’s time to step up action to prevent this serious threat to the development of healthy societies,” the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a report. “Far too many people, their families and communities suffer the consequences of the harmful use of alcohol.”
In its Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2018, the WHO said that globally, an estimated 237 million men and 46 million women are problem drinkers or alcohol abusers. The highest prevalence is in Europe and the Americas, and alcohol-use disorders are more common in wealthier countries. (…)