"• The global burden of disease and injuries caused by alcohol consumption can be quantified for 31 health conditions on the basis of the available scientific evidence for the role of alcohol use in their development, occurrence and outcomes.
"• Worldwide, 2.6 million deaths were attributable to alcohol consumption in 2019, representing 4.7% of all deaths in that year.
"• The alcohol-attributable disease burden is heaviest among males: 2 million alcohol-attributable deaths and 6.9% of all DALYs among males and 0.6 million deaths and 2.0% of all DALYs among females in 2019.
"• The highest levels of alcohol-attributable deaths per 100 000 persons are observed in the WHO African and European regions.
"• Globally, an estimated 400 million people, or 7% of the world’s population aged 15 years and older, live with alcohol use disorders, and an estimated 209 million (3.7% of the adult world population) live with alcohol dependence, with substantial differences in the numbers of people affected in different WHO regions.
"• There has been a decreasing trend in the prevalence of alcohol use disorders worldwide since 2010 driven by decreases in the regions of the Americas, Europe and the Western Pacific, while an increasing trend is observed in the African, Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia regions.
"• The burden of age-standardized mortality (death rates) and morbidity (DALY rates) from alcohol consumption per litre of alcohol consumed is highest in low-income countries, followed by lower-middle-income countries, and is lowest in high-income countries.
"• The health burden expressed in years of healthy life lost due to ill-health or disability from alcohol consumption per litre of alcohol consumed is highest in high-income countries due, in part, to the high prevalence of alcohol use disorders and high rates of ill-health and disability associated with alcohol-related unintentional injuries.
"• People of younger age are disproportionately affected by alcohol consumption with the highest proportion (13.0%) of alcohol-attributable deaths from all deaths in 2019 among persons of 20–39 years.
"• From 2010 to 2019, the number of deaths attributable to alcohol per 100 000 people decreased by 20.2% – greater than the overall decrease in total deaths worldwide for the same period of time (14.8%); similarly a decrease in the number of alcohol-attributable DALYs lost within the same period (18.3%) was larger than the observed decrease in all-cause DALYs lost (14.0%)."
Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO
