Experts call for urgent action to reduce ‘unacceptably high’ death toll from diseases directly linked to drinking
Alcohol will claim more than 90,000 lives over the next decade without urgent action to tackle the country’s increasingly ruinous relationship with drinking, experts warn today.
They predict that 90,800 people will be killed by diseases directly linked to drinking, such as alcoholic liver disease and chronic hepatitis, and alcohol poisoning.
Deaths due to drinking have trebled over the last 25 years as per capita consumption has risen to become one of the highest in Europe, according to research by Prof Martin Plant, of the University of the West of England, one of the UK’s leading authorities on alcohol-related harm.
If recent trends continue, the number of people each year who die because their body can no longer cope with alcohol will reach 9,080, a study by Plant and colleagues shows. That is more than one fatality per hour every day of the year. The figure does not include people who die as a result of alcohol-related accidents, such as drink-driving, or those in whom alcohol has exacerbated their ill-health, such as various forms of cancer.
“This is an unacceptably high death toll and the worst part is that all of these deaths are avoidable,” said Don Shenker, of Alcohol Concern, which commissioned the research. Currently 8,724 deaths a year are directly attributable to alcohol, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Alcohol-related deaths have risen in every age group since 1990, with 55- to 74-year-olds seeing the highest mortality rates and steepest increase, Plant’s research reveals. He and his team analysed alcohol consumption per head and drink deaths over the last 25 years. They say their findings prove definitively that the more people drink, the more deaths will follow.
Plant said the government needed to make reducing drink-related deaths the top priority of its alcohol strategy. The report prompted fresh calls from medical leaders for ministers to implement tough measures to curb consumption, such as introducing a minimum price per unit of alcohol, as recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) last week. Gordon Brown has ruled out such a move, but the minority SNP government at Holyrood is exploring its introduction in Scotland.
“Over the next decade alcohol misuse is set to kill more people than the population of a city the size of Bath,” said Prof Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians. “Much of this tragic loss of life, often in young and otherwise productive people, could be prevented if our policymakers followed the evidence for what works. Confronting the culture of low prices and saturation advertising, along with investments in accessible, effective treatments for harmful and dependent drinkers could make a big impact on what is becoming a public health emergency.”
Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “For 90,000 lives to be thrown away as a result of excessive drinking would be an absolute tragedy. All political parties … must think carefully about the steps needed to … prevent the predicted devastation from becoming a reality.”
The public health minister, Gillian Merron, said: “Any death from alcohol is a death too many. Although the majority of people who drink alcohol drink responsibly, we must take action to reduce the health and social harm caused by those who don’t.
“That’s why the government is working harder than ever to reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions and to help those who regularly drink too much or are dependent on alcohol.”
Source: www.guardianco.uk 19th Oct 2009
