Malta is the third EU+ country with the largest growth in per capita alcohol consumption, according to a 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) report.
Europe continues to record the highest levels of alcohol consumption globally, resulting in the highest share of all alcohol related deaths, the WHO pointed out.
The report measured alcohol consumption, alcohol-attributable harm and alcohol policy responses in 28 European Union Member States including Norway and Switzerland, between 2010 and 2016.
In the given timeframe, alcohol intake per capita in Malta rose by 1.1 litres, the third highest rise after Latvia (+1.3 litres) and Slovenia (+1.2 litres).
Other countries turned to the bottle more frequently in the six years were Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, France and Poland.
Alarmingly, alcohol-attributable deaths among adolescents and young adults in the EU+ countries remained high, even though the figure had declined by almost one third between 2010 and 2016.
In 2016, one in every five deaths in this group was liquor related.
Furthermore, 91.3 per cent of all alcohol attributable mortality in adolescents and young adults was due to injury, indicating that stricter policies to protect these groups from alcohol-attributable acute harm are needed, concluded the report.
Despite a growing taste for liquor, Malta was among those countries that experienced the least alcohol-attributable deaths, characterised by a proportion of less than four per cent.
Other countries in this group were Norway, Sweden, Italy, Cyprus and Greece.
Overall in 2016, 5.5 per cent of all deaths in the EU+ were caused by alcohol, meaning that more than every 19th death in these countries was liquor related, according to the report.
Chronic diseases led to most alcohol-attributable deaths in the EU+ rather than acute harm such as injuries and poisonings.
The main cause of death due to alcohol in 2016 was cancer (29 per cent of alcohol-attributable deaths), followed by liver cirrhosis (20 per cent), cardiovascular disease (19 per cent) and injury (18 per cent). “Europe still faces an enormous challenge to reduce the burden alcohol places on its citizens, and more action is needed. Despite the well-established relationship between alcohol and premature mortality and morbidity, alcohol consumption in the EU+ has not changed significantly between 2010 and 2016,” the report concluded.