Canada: Women Increasingly Die From Alcohol
The rate of women who died from causes directly linked to alcohol use has increased by 26% since 2001, compared with a 5% increase over the same period for men, according to a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. More Canadian women are consuming alcohol to the point where they end up in hospital, or even die from alcohol consumption, as the new CIHI statistics show.
The findings only include conditions like chronic alcohol use disorder, withdrawal delirium, cirrhosis, acute pancreatitis and extreme intoxication – not conditions that alcohol is a risk factor for. The alcohol burden in Canada is of massive proportions.
For example, alcohol is the second biggest risk factor for cancer.
I’m sad to say it, but I’ve had shifts at the hospital here in Calgary where I look over my patient list at the end of the shift and if it wasn’t for alcohol, I’d have no patients,” says Dr. Eddy Lang, department head for emergency medicine in the Calgary zone.
There are more hospitalizations related to alcohol than heart attacks, according to CIHI: 77,000 compared to 75,000 in 2015. Both young and older people are affected. While young people are delivered to hospitals comatose after a night out, older people form the majority of Dr. Lang’s alcohol-related patients. They are coming in with alcohol withdrawal, which causes “the shakes,” vomiting and hallucinations.
We have to take alcohol more seriously,” said Jurgen Rehm, senior director of the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, per Global News.
Making alcohol less-advertised, less affordable and less available would help to cut down on the burden of disease, but so far, our political system doesn’t want to do that.”