3.1 AGGREGATE HEALTH EFFECTS
Figure 14 gives an overview of the proportion of all global deaths and burden of disease caused by alcohol consumption, i.e. alcohol-attributable fractions (AAFs, see Box 7 in chapter 1). In other words, this is the net impact of alcohol consumption on the health status of the world as a whole rather than the impact on individuals. As highlighted in chapter 1, associations with alcohol without a quantifiable causal link are not reported in this chapter.
As shown in Figure 14, alcohol impacts different disease and injury outcomes to various degrees. Besides alcohol use disorders (AUDs) and fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), which are defined as being 100% attributable to alcohol, liver diseases (most prominently liver cirrhosis) have the highest AAF. As these diseases are relatively prevalent and are among the top 20 causes of death globally, alcohol-attributable liver disease is a major factor in global burden of disease (Rehm & Shield, 2013). Beyond AUDs, FAS and liver diseases, alcohol is related to many diseases and causes of death with relatively low AAFs. In other words, for most alcohol-attributable causes of death or burden of disease categories, less than 20% of the respective disease burden is attributable to alcohol. This has implications