Geneva (AFP) - Alcohol kills 3.3
million people worldwide each year, more than AIDS, tuberculosis and
violence combined, the World Health Organization said Monday, warning
that booze consumption was on the rise.
Including drunk
driving, alcohol-induced violence and abuse, and a multitude of diseases
and disorders, alcohol causes one in 20 deaths globally every year, the
UN health agency said.
"This
actually translates into one death every 10 seconds," Shekhar Saxena,
who heads the WHO's Mental Health and Substance Abuse department, told
reporters in Geneva.
Alcohol
caused some 3.3 million deaths in 2012, WHO said, equivalent to 5.9
percent of global deaths (7.6 percent for men and 4.0 percent for
women).
In comparison, HIV/AIDS
is responsible for 2.8 percent, tuberculosis causes 1.7 percent of
deaths and violence is responsible for just 0.9 percent, the study
showed.
More people in
countries where alcohol consumption has traditionally been low, like
China and India, are also increasingly taking up the habit as their
wealth increases, it said.
"More needs to be done to
protect populations from the negative health consequences of alcohol
consumption," Oleg Chestnov of the WHO's Noncommunicable Diseases and
Mental Health unit said in a statement launching a massive report on
global alcohol consumption and its impact on public health.
Drinking
is linked to more than 200 health conditions, including liver cirrhosis
and some cancers. Alcohol abuse also makes people more susceptible to
infectious diseases like tuberculosis, HIV and pneumonia, the report
found.
Most deaths attributed to alcohol, around a third, are caused by associated cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Alcohol-related
accidents, such as car crashes, were the second-highest killer,
accounting for around 17.1 percent of all alcohol-related deaths.
