Good morning.
It my pleasure to join you at a high level meeting on law for prevention and control of alcohol related harms.
Harmful use of alcohol causes a large disease, social and economic burden in societies.
- Alcohol use increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases including haemorrhagic stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease and fatal aortic aneurysm.
- Excessive alcohol consumption can cause liver traumas and liver cirrhosis, worsen traumas caused by the hepatitis C virus and result in acute or chronic pancreatitis.
- Alcohol consumption is causally related to oral cavity, hypopharyngeal, oropharyngeal, laryngeal, oesophageal, liver, colon, rectal, intrahepatic bile duct and the female breast cancer.
- Alcohol use increases the risk of being involved in a crash for drivers, motorcyclists and pedestrians due to impaired body reactions, limited physical coordination, reduced eyesight, limited vision and sleepiness.
- Alcohol consumption can contribute to many other severe social problems such as aggression, violence, reduction of public order and safety, crimes and impairment of social function.
We are concerned of alcohol consumption pattern and its negative consequence in Viet Nam.
- Vietnamese adults drink alcohol too much. We estimated that Vietnamese adult consumed 8.3 litres of pure alcohol in 2016 which is about 470 bottles of beer per year. Average alcohol consumption in the Western Pacific Region was 7.3 litres only.
- Vietnamese adults show very dangerous alcohol consumption pattern. If you consume 6 or more standard alcohol unit (6 or more Bia Hoi glasses) at one occasion of drinking, it is very harmful to your health. We call it heavy episodic drinking. The 2015 NCD risk survey revealed that about 44% of Vietnamese drinkers engaged in heavy episodic drinking.
We are more concerned on driking driving pattern of Vietnamese adult male drinkers and dangerours alcohol consumption pattern among youth.
- The 2015 NCD risk survey revealed that about 48% of male adult drinkers drive after consuming alcohol – a very dangerous practice.
- About 48% of students between the age of 14 and 17 consuming alcohol.
Alcohol use in Viet Nam resulted in an estimated 79 000 related deaths in 2016. Hundreds of thousands of others required hospital treatment for diseases or accidents related to alcohol. Harmful use of alcohol is also taking away valuable resources for the pressing needs for development of Viet Nam.
Colleagues,
Harmful use of alcohol is an important public health issue in Viet Nam which need urgent public action including legislation to prevention and control of alcohol-related harms.
On behalf of the World Health Organization, I appreciated leaders of the National Assembly as well as leaders of Ministry of Health for putting the health agenda on priority legislation agenda.
Today, I would emphasize again two guiding principles which should be applied in deciding policies for prevention and control of alcohol related harms:
- Governments, policy makers should protect vulnerable groups from exposure to alcohol marketing, particularly children and adolescents.
- People who choose to abstain from drinking should be protected from exposure to alcohol marketing.
Based on these principles, we recommend three best-buy and two good-buy policy measures to Viet Nam as well as other Member States.
Three best-buy policy measures are:
- Increase excise taxes on alcoholic beverages
- Enact and enforce bans or comprehensive restrictions on exposure to alcohol advertising (across multiple types of media)
- Enact and enforce restrictions on the physical availability of retailed alcohol (via reduced hours of sale)
Two good-buy policy measures are:
- Enact and enforce drink-driving laws and blood alcohol concentration limits via checkpoints
- Provide brief psychosocial intervention for persons with hazardous and harmful alcohol use
Colleagues,
There is misconception among some group of people that drinking beer cause less harm to health thant drinking wine or sprit.
It is not true. It is false.
Alcohol-related harm does not depend on the type of beverage.
Alcohol-related harm depends on the total volume of drinking ethanol and the pattern of drinking.
If you drink one glass of 330 ml of 4% draft beer (Bia Hoi), you drink 10 gm of pure alcohol, a standard drink.
The amount of pure alcohol drinking is same for one glass of 330 ml of 4% Bia Hoi, one 100 ml glas of 13.5% wine and one 30 ml cup of 40% spirit.
There should be no exception in regulating alcohol marketing based on alcohol type.
Today, we gather to show our support for the development of an overarching legal framework for addressing alcohol-related harms effectively.
In order to support your deliberation, we prepared QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF ALCOHOL- RELATED HARM which is available today.
I’d like to express again my appreciation for the Social Affairs Committee, the Ministry of Health, other ministries, provincial authorities and development partners for their leadership and support in developing this important policy.
I do hope, with your support, a strong bill could be adopted at the 7th Legislature in May/June 2019.
I do hope with this law we will help prevent and minimize the negative consequences of alcohol use
I do hope with this law we will promote healthy Vietnamese people in the generations to come.
Thank you very much.