The burden of disease concept represents the impact of living with illness and injury and dying prematurely. Substance use is a significant risk factor for death and disability globally. It is an important risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. A large proportion of this burden is due to the effect of substance use on other health outcomes.

Watch the video below to get an overview of the global burden due to substanes.

The World Drug Report offers the annual prevalence of use of different psychoactive substances. The annual prevalence of use of different psychoactive substances across the member states in SEAR has been provided below (best estimate in the general population). It is important to mention the heterogeneity in terms of the source of data, data collection methodology, year for which the most recent data are available etc. across different countries.*

*Data not available for the countries for which the values have not been provided.

According to the Global Burden of Disease study, globally 99·2 million Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) (95% Uncertainty Interval (UI) 88·3–111·2) and 4·2% of all DALYs (3·7–4·6) were attributable to alcohol use, and 31·8 million DALYs (27·4–36·6) and 1·3% of all DALYs (1·2–1·5) were attributable to drug use as a risk factor. The burden due to various substance use disorders in South East Asia region has been presented below.

• GBD 2016 Alcohol and Drug Use Collaborators. The global burden of disease attributable to alcohol and drug use in 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 [published correction appears in Lancet Psychiatry. 2019 Jan;6(1):e2]. Lancet Psychiatry. 2018;5(12):987-1012. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30337-7
• World Drug Report 2020. Accessible at https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/index.html