Global NCD Conference on Alcohol Abuse moots for tough Regulatory systems  

By Elijaih Khisa

The international community has come out and taken a strong stand on the collective fight of alcohol consumption among the population given its devastating health effects on its victims.

This new development came to light recently during the 7^th high level Global Alcohol policy conference held in South Africa which was convened to discuss as a global community the negative health effects on  the population leading to escalating cases of non-communicable diseases [NCDs] which have become a global burden.

The conference theme ‘Investing in People before Profits, Building the Momentum towards the Framework Convention on Alcohol Control’, brought together   521 delegates drawn from 55 countries among the regions such as   Africa, Asia, Middle East, Australia, USA, Europe and South America among other regions who collectively recognized alcohol’s significant role in the global burden of disease and as a major barrier to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

They called on individual respective national governments to recognize the alcohol industry’s conflict of interest with effective alcohol policies and establish clear rules separating the industry from engagement with policy development.

They challenged the World Health Organization [WHO] Member States to direct the WHO Director-General and other intergovernmental organizations to among other issues study the necessity and feasibility of a legally binding instrument to strengthen the public health response to alcohol consumption and related harm, through consultation with nation states and civil society, and  report the findings through the Executive Board to the World Health Assembly.

The delegates reportedly discussed many emerging issues related to the subject matter and came up with key resolutions aimed at reducing the burden facing endemic countries that heavily consume alcohol products.

Some of them include the resolution that each member state should regulate consumption of alcohol by imposing   higher taxes on all related products as a deliberate strategy to restrict reckless consumption and ensuring that the recovered taxes are injected into the healthcare systems to treat   the medical conditions resulting from over consumption of the products.

While discussing statistics from consumption of alcohol, Uganda was reportedly listed at position 4 at the global ranking while on the African continent it was listed as top of the chat culprit which development calls for tougher measures to curb these statistics.

The delegates according to the Uganda country NCDA executive director Christopher Kwizera who was among the Ugandan strong delegation reportedly expressed deep concern about the negative consequences brought about by over consumption of alcohol such as loss of both lives and resources as a result of loss of economic productivity, increase in household poverty, disease burden of treating victims of alcohol which directly puts a strain on the economies of affected countries.

The Ugandan delegation included a technical team from the ministry of health, the NCDA sector members of parliament,  Uganda WHO and UN sector family country representatives among others.