Keeping with our International theme from yesterday, today’s info-graphic reports on world-wide prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The information comes from the report titled:
Estimation of national, regional, and global prevalence of alcohol use during pregnancy and fetal alcohol syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
by Svetlana Popova, Shannon Lange, Charlotte Probst, Gerrit Gmel, Jürgen Rehm
This report was published in January 2017 by The Lancet Global Health. Copyright © The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. You can download the full report by clicking the link above. It is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
According to the authors:
We aimed to estimate the prevalence of alcohol use during pregnancy and of FAS among the general population, by country, WHO region (ie, African region [AFR], Eastern Mediterranean region [EMR], European region [EUR], region of the Americas [AMR], South-East Asia region [SEAR], and Western Pacific region [WPR]), and globally.
In line with the International Charter on Prevention of FASD, the current study provides the best understanding of the scope of the problem at this time and is intended to both inform and draw the attention of health-care practitioners, public health authorities, policy makers, and government officials.
Although there are currently no confirmed statistics on the number of people in Canada with FASD, the population of Canada in 2017 is 36,634,185.
Rates are estimated anywhere between 1 – 5%:
- 1% = 366,341 people with FASD.
- 3% = 1,099,025 people with FASD.
- 5% = 1,831,709 people with FASD.
Therefore, in Canada, there are between 366,341 – 1,831,709 people with FASD. It is also important to note that the prevalence of FASD is currently unknown. The most commonly cited rough estimate of the prevalence of FASD is 9 per 1,000 (Roberts & Nanson, 2000).
According to a Health Review on FASD by the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking: Information on the prevalence of FASD, both globally and in individual countries, is scarce, and where it exists, is highly varied and of questionable reliability.
While it has been suggested that, globally, 5% of all pregnancies may result in children with FASD, individual studies cover few countries, where they often focus on small populations. The IARD Review reported the following statistics for FASD prevalence:
- Australia: 0.26 per 1,000 live births
- Canada: 9 per 1,000 live births
- Norway: 0.3 per 1,000 births
- Israel: 150 per 1,000 among pre-adoption and foster children
- Italy: 36 per 1,000 school children
- New Zealand: 0.11 per 1,000 births
- South Africa: 113.22 per 1,000 births
- United States: 16.5 per 1,000 school children
Tomorrow we look at cost of FASD.