Accra, Oct. 17, GNA – The Alcohol Policy Alliance-Ghana (GhanAPA), a non-governmental organisation has called on government to provide a national alcoholic beverages regulations to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (3.5).
It said the lack of the regulations had resulted in indiscriminate advertisement of alcoholic beverages in the media, reinforcing the harmful drinking culture of the citizenry.
The GhanAPA said the provision of the regulations would help reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases in the country.
This was contained in a statement jointly signed by Mr Benjamin Anabila and Mr Adam Abdul Fatah, the Chairman and the National Coordinator of GhanAPA respectively and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday.
It said the “social and economic cost of alcohol consumption to families, communities and nations were insurmountable.
“Alcohol consumption drags down development through increase healthcare cost and decrease productivity. Alcohol use worsens health inequalities and exacerbates poverty, as the poorest people divert spending to alcohol from essentials such as food, education and healthcare,” it said.
The statement said: “The good news is that, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the economic forum ‘Best Buy’; ban alcohol advertising, restricted access to retailed alcohol and tax and price measures (WEF and WHO 2011). So there is clear direction from the WHO on the path to chat on the regulations, so what is keeping us so long as a country?”
The statement said in 2012, alcohol was responsible for 6.4 per cent of all deaths and 4.7 per cent of all disability (Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in the African Region – Ferreira-Borges 2012.
It said a “WHO 2014 report” had stated that alcohol was responsible for 3.3 million deaths annually worldwide, and was a causal factor to more than 200 diseases and injury conditions.
“Globally, the level of harm attributed to alcohol use is close to that of tobacco and it affects the young in particular, leading to pre mature death and disability for males in between the ages of 15 and 24, Gore, Blown et all.2011.”
The statement said: “Globally 6.2 per cent of all male deaths are attributed to alcohol, compared to 1.1 per cent of female death. Already, about 86,200 people die every year from alcohol use in Ghana (WHO 2014 Survey.)
