Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy on Saturday said that alcohol abuse is one of the main risk factors for the development of chronic diseases in Guyana and in an effort to battle this issue it is necessary to ensure the availability of comprehensive and reliable data. To this end the country is about to embark on a major strengthening of its surveillance system.
According to a statement, released on Saturday by Dr Ramsammy, alcohol abuse can also lead to domestic violence, the destruction of social relationships and road accidents.
“The line between moderate use and overuse is very thin, and abuse of it [alcohol] can easily sneak into the lives of persons, of any age, race or creed,” the minister said.
In order to be able to develop policies and strategies to address these problems there was need for data, he went on, hence the move to strengthen the surveillance system, a part of which consists of the enhancement programme to obtain data relating to alcohol abuse.
It is for this reason that Guyana last year became a participating country in the PAHO/WHO-funded Valencia project; the other participating countries are Panama, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
According to Dr Ramsammy the project consists of three surveys: the Brief Intervention Survey; Gender, Alcohol and Culture: An international survey (GENACIS); and the Emergency Room Study (ER Study).
The minister said he was currently preparing to conduct the first GENACIS survey which would be undertaken in Regions 3 and 4 and would be coordinated by the Surveillance Department of the Ministry of Health in collaboration with PAHO and the Bureau of Statistics.
A total of 2000 households would be surveyed and both the households and the interviewees would be randomly selected according to the standard procedures of the Bureau of Statistics.
Meanwhile, in preparation for this upcoming survey, a workshop was held by the Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organization on April 7 and 8. It was facilitated by two professors from the University of Dakota, Drs Sharon Wilsnack and Arlinda Kristjanson.
Twenty-one interviewers were trained at the workshop and in the course of the
sessions the questionnaires were thoroughly reviewed and discussed to ensure that they were of the best possible quality to achieve optimum results.
The minister explained that his ministry’s next steps would be to communicate to the public and prepare all the necessary materials; it is proposed that the survey would begin mid-May.
“This survey extends the interventions being taken by the Ministry of Health to battle alcohol abuse and its burden on the people of Guyana,” the minister said.
It is aimed at showing the correlation between alcohol and injuries and alcohol and gender in Guyana, and it is believed that such research could provide much needed insight into dealing with the issue of alcohol abuse. While it is known that this abuse affects the country in different ways, there is hardly any supporting data. Dr Ramsammy has repeatedly said that alcohol abuse costs the health sector millions of dollars yearly through road accidents and the provision of mental health care.
Meanwhile, the health minister in his statement said that in Guyana, diabetes and hypertension were two of the main chronic diseases, and alcohol was one of the major contributing factors to both of them.
“There are 24,000 to 36000 persons living with diabetes and 40,000 to 50,000 persons living with hypertension currently in Guyana. It is not only a problem in Guyana but also in the Caribbean and around the world,” the minister said.
Alcohol consumption had become one of the leading risk factors for the burden of disease around the world, he continued, and he quoted the 2002 World Health Report (WHO) as saying that alcohol was responsible for 4% of the burden of disease, or the loss of 58.3 million Disability-adjusted Life Years (DALYs) and for causing 3.2% of all deaths worldwide (1.8 million).
Alcohol is the leading health risk factor in developing countries with low mortality levels, where it is responsible for the loss of 6.2% of DALY. In developed countries, it is the third leading risk factor, responsible for the loss of 9.2% of DALYs, the report further said.