Alcohol claims 2.5 million lives a year: WHO

Alcohol claims 2.5 million lives a year: WHO

Alcohol claims 2.5 million lives a year: WHO

GENEVA, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The use of alcohol causes approximately 2.5 million deaths a year, and young people were especially vulnerable to its harms, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday in a report profiling 193 countries on alcohol controls. "One third of deaths (from alcohol) are among young people," said Dr. Shekhar Saxena, director of the WHO's Mental Health and Substance Abuse department, adding that alcohol is responsible for 9 percent of all deaths that occurred to people aged between 15 and 29. "Alcohol is also a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries," the WHO expert stressed. Saxena said alcohol consumption may lead to liver cirrhosis, epilepsy, poisonings, and mental disturbance which very often causes road accident or violent behavior. Recent research even proved the links between alcohol abuse and cancers. Vladimir Poznyak, the head of WHO's substance abuse unit who collaborated the report, said: "Six or seven years ago we didn't have strong evidence of a causal relationship between drinking and breast cancer. Now we do." Restrictions on alcohol marketing and on drink-driving were tightened in some countries through the past few decades, but there are still many with weak alcohol policies and insufficient prevention programs. The Global Strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, endorsed by WHO member states in May 2010, promotes a range of proven effective measures for reducing alcohol-related harm. These measures include taxation on alcohol to refrain from harmful drinking, restraining availability through reducing alcohol distribution, raising age limits for the buyers and imposing effective drink-driving prohibitions.

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