Use of alcohol and its consequences on health in Argentine Northwest. Sex differentials and impact of life expectancy at birth during 2011

Abstract

In 2012, harmful alcohol consumption was responsible for 5.9% of the world´s deaths. In Argentina, during 2008, 11,013 deaths were due to this risk factor, representing 3.6% of the country´s total deaths. However, the use of alcohol in that country has remained at about 9.5 liters of pure alcohol per capita in recent years, 3.3 liters superior to world consumption.We make a quantitative, transversal and descriptive study in order to study the mortality attributable to alcohol consumption in the Argentine Northwest in 2011 and how it affects the life expectancy of the region in men and women.The methodology proposed by the CDC (1990) - Attributable Mortality to Alcohol Consumption (MACA) and Years of Life Expectancy (Arriaga, 1996) is applied. It is intended to simulate two scenarios of the possible impact of certain public policies on the mortality measured with the latter indicator.We use secondary sources of data as National Vital statistics, specific health surveys and also population projections of official organisms. Previously we make a brief estimation of statistics data quality using Murray and Lopez (1996) garbage codes.