Volume of alcohol consumption, patterns of drinking and burden of disease in the European region 2002

AIMS: To describe the volume of alcohol consumption and patterns of drinking in the World Health Organization (WHO) European regions in 2002 and to estimate quantitatively the burden of disease attributable to alcohol in that year. METHODS: Secondary data analysis. Exposure data were taken from the WHO Comparative Risk Assessment, outcome data from the WHO Measurement and Health Information department, and used to derive three outcome measures: deaths, years of life lost (YLL) and disability adjusted life years (DALY) for 2002. All calculations were conducted according to age, sex and region. RESULTS: Alcohol consumption in the WHO regions for Europe was high, with 12.1 litres pure alcohol per capita, on average more than 100% above the global consumption. Alcohol consumption caused a considerable disease burden: 6.1% of all the deaths, 12.3% of all YLL and 10.7% of all DALY in all European regions in 2002 could be attributed to this exposure. Intentional and unintentional injuries accounted for almost 50% of all alcohol-attributable deaths and almost 44% of alcohol-attributable disease burden. Young people and men were affected the most. Geographically, the most eastern region around Russia had the highest alcohol-attributable disease burden. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions should be implemented to reduce the high burden of alcohol-attributable disease in the European regions. Given the epidemiological structure of the burden, injury prevention, including but not restricted to the prevention of traffic injuries, and specific prevention for young people should play the most important role in a comprehensive plan to reduce alcohol-attributable burden.