FILE PHOTO: An employee pours whiskey into a glass at a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Oct. 18, 2018. REUTERS / Samrang Baring
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The World Health Organization on Monday recommended doubling taxes on alcohol in Europe as a way to prevent nearly 5,000 cancer deaths each year.
The European office of the World Health Organization said that raising taxes on alcohol is “one of the best measures” to prevent cancer “that has the potential to have a significant impact,” adding that countries such as Russia and the United Kingdom United would be the most benefited.
The World Health Organization has said that alcohol consumption is causally linked to cancers of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, colon, rectum, liver, larynx, and breast cancer in women.
The WHO said its model projections show “an estimated 10,700 new cancer cases and 4,850 alcohol-related cancer deaths annually in the WHO European region could be avoided by doubling current excise taxes on alcoholic beverages.”
This represents about six percent of new cases and deaths from alcohol-related cancers in the WHO European region, which includes 53 countries and territories and includes Russia and several Central Asian countries.
The WHO regional office said it estimated that an estimated 180,000 cases and 85,000 deaths each year “are due to alcohol.”
For the World Health Organization, current levels of taxes on alcohol remain “low” in many parts of Europe, particularly in the 27 countries of the European Union.
Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany would be the ones that would save the most lives by adopting the tax measure, with 725, 680 and 525 deaths, respectively, avoided, according to the model published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
He said doubling taxes would particularly help prevent deaths from breast cancer (1,000 deaths a year) and colorectal cancer (1,700).
The World Health Organization said 4.8 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Europe in 2020.
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