Deaths from alcoholism since 2000 (FOI)

​​Request

For each year from 2000 to 2024, please advise how many deaths there have been from alcoholism that fall into the categories below:

1. Alcohol-Specific Deaths: These refer to deaths directly caused by alcohol consumption. For example, deaths from alcoholic liver disease, alcohol poisoning, or alcohol-related accidents are recorded under this category. In health reporting systems like the World Health Organization (WHO) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK, these are included in official mortality records.

2. Alcohol-Related Deaths: These are broader and include deaths where alcohol was a contributing factor. For example, alcohol may not be the primary cause, but it might have contributed to conditions like cirrhosis, cancer, heart disease, and even accidents or suicides. These deaths are classified under “alcohol-related” deaths.

Response

1.

Data in this response covers the period between 2007 and 2022. Cause of death data prior to 2007 is held in the historic ICD-9 coding standard, since current methodologies to determine alcohol-specific and alcohol-related deaths are based on the more recent ICD-10 coding standard, the data for these earlier years is not directly comparable. As such, deaths prior to 2007 are not included in this response. Deaths prior to 2007 have therefore been excluded from this response. The cause of death information for deaths occurring in the years 2023 and 2024 is not yet available, so the alcohol-specific and alcohol-related deaths for these years are not included in this response. Therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

The following conditions and their corresponding ICD-10 cause of death codes are those defined as being wholly attributable to alcohol:

Alcohol-specific deaths are those where the underlying cause is deemed to be one of these conditions wholly attributable to alcohol as listed above.

The number of alcohol-specific deaths annually from 2007 to 2022 (rounded to the nearest 5), were the following:

2.

A full breakdown of all conditions defined as being wholly or partially attributable to alcohol, alongside their corresponding alcohol-attributable fractions for each age group and gender can be found in table 6 here: 

Alcohol-attributable fractions for England: An update​

Alcohol-related deaths are those where the underlying cause is deemed to be one of the conditions included in this table. This includes deaths that are either wholly or partially attributable to alcohol. For deaths that are partially attributable to alcohol, the alcohol-attributable fraction of the death is included in the calculation rather than attributing the whole death to alcohol. All deaths caused by diseases with a negative fraction have been excluded as the indicator is designed to quantify only the level of harm caused by alcohol.

The number of alcohol-related deaths annually from 2007 to 2022 (rounded to the nearest 5), were the following:

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Article Applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.​