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The Huge Reduction in Adult Male Mortality in Belarus and Russia: Is It
Attributable to Anti-Alcohol Measures?
#MMPMID26376439
Grigoriev P
; Andreev EM
PLoS One
2015[]; 10
(9
): e0138021
PMID26376439
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BACKGROUND AND AIM: Harmful alcohol consumption has long been recognized as being
the major determinant of male premature mortality in the European countries of
the former USSR. Our focus here is on Belarus and Russia, two Slavic countries
which continue to suffer enormously from the burden of the harmful consumption of
alcohol. However, after a long period of deterioration, mortality trends in these
countries have been improving over the past decade. We aim to investigate to what
extent the recent declines in adult mortality in Belarus and Russia are
attributable to the anti-alcohol measures introduced in these two countries in
the 2000s. DATA AND METHODS: We rely on the detailed cause-specific mortality
series for the period 1980-2013. Our analysis focuses on the male population, and
considers only a limited number of causes of death which we label as being
alcohol-related: accidental poisoning by alcohol, liver cirrhosis, ischemic heart
diseases, stroke, transportation accidents, and other external causes. For each
of these causes we computed age-standardized death rates. The life table
decomposition method was used to determine the age groups and the causes of death
responsible for changes in life expectancy over time. CONCLUSION: Our results do
not lead us to conclude that the schedule of anti-alcohol measures corresponds to
the schedule of mortality changes. The continuous reduction in adult male
mortality seen in Belarus and Russia cannot be fully explained by the
anti-alcohol policies implemented in these countries, although these policies
likely contributed to the large mortality reductions observed in Belarus and
Russia in 2005-2006 and in Belarus in 2012. Thus, the effects of these policies
appear to have been modest. We argue that the anti-alcohol measures implemented
in Belarus and Russia simply coincided with fluctuations in alcohol-related
mortality which originated in the past. If these trends had not been underway
already, these huge mortality effects would not have occurred.
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