NEW DELHI: As many as 2.6 million deaths per year globally are attributable to alcohol consumption, accounting for 4.7% of all deaths in 2019, according to the latest report by the WHO.

The World Health Organisation’s global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders said that the alcohol-attributable disease burden is heaviest among males – two million alcohol-attributable deaths and 6.9% of all disability-adjusted life year (DALY) among males and 0.6 million deaths and 2.0% of all DALYs among females in 2019.

The report said that 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.

It highlighted that the highest proportion, or 13%, of alcohol-attributable deaths in 2019 were among young people aged 20-39 years.

Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted global alcohol consumption, it said there was an estimated 10% relative reduction from 2019 to 2020 but with different, and sometimes opposite, impacts in other countries and population groups.

In India, the report said that alcohol consumption increased until the COVID-19 pandemic began. “In the South-East Asia Region, with India as the largest country, levels of alcohol consumption increased steadily until the COVID-19 pandemic began due to economic growth coupled with a fractured response to control policies,” the report said.

It said that in 2019, 17% of people aged 15+ years and 38% of current drinkers engaged in heavy episodic drinking or “binge drinking” – consuming at least 60g of pure alcohol on one or more occasions in the last month – while continuous heavy drinking was highly prevalent (6.7%) among men.