Overall, in the year 2004, alcohol consumption caused 1.4 million net NCD deaths, and 17.8 million net years of life lost (YLLs) and 21.1 million net disability adjusted life years (DALYs) among NCDs. For all categories, men contribute the lion’s share of the burden (see Table 1), by a factor of about 6–7 times greater burden in men. Overall, these numbers constitute 3.4%, 5.0% and 2.4% of all deaths, YLLs and DALYs respectively (see Table 1). These numbers were based on the alcohol-attributable fractions from the CRA of 2000 [8;34]applied to the estimation of the GBD for 2004 [9]: this means that they did not take into consideration the effect of alcohol on atrial fibrillation [33]or pancreatitis, as there had not been any GBD categories for either disease [35]. As alcohol consumption has only detrimental effects on both categories, this means that Table 1 clearly underestimates the alcohol-attributable portion of NCD.
