Following a recent survey that showed an increase in alcohol consumption in the country, the Ministry of Health has launched a new campaign aimed at fighting the behaviour among people, especially the youth.
Dubbed “TunyweLess,” the campaign is aimed at reaching out to people through various means including both social and conventional media, asking them to either stop drinking or drink less.
The campaign’s first promotional video shared on the ministry’s Twitter page features the health minister Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana in a bar, talking to people about the dangers of alcohol.
“Alcohol damages life; alcohol leads to various diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases. Do you think you can drink all these bottles and your health does not get affected?” he asked, before he proposed that they stop drinking or at least drink less.
Late June, the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) released results of a new survey that showed that alcohol consumption in the country has increased from 41 percent in 2013 to 48 percent in 2022.
The survey, which aimed to gather data on various risk factors for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), involved face-to-face interviews and physical and biochemical measurements from 5,676 individuals aged between 18 and 69 from all four provinces of Rwanda.
The survey, however, found a decrease in heavy episodic drinking from 23.5 percent in 2013 to 15.2 percent in 2022.
Heavy episodic drinking is defined as the proportion of adults (15+ years) who have consumed at least 60 grams or more of pure alcohol on at least one occasion in the past 30 days.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), consuming 60 grams of pure alcohol is approximately equivalent to consuming six standard alcoholic drinks.
The WHO says there is no safe amount of alcohol that does not affect health. It adds that alcohol consumption is linked to various types of cancer, including common forms such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer.
Among the provinces, the Western province had the highest rate of heavy alcohol drinking at 19.1 percent, followed by the Northern province with 15.8 percent, the Southern province with 15.1 percent, the Eastern province with 13.8 percent, and Kigali with the lowest rate at 10.5 percent.
In a televised interview that President Kagame did on Liberation Day, July 4, he talked about the significance of avoiding excessive alcohol consumption and making thoughtful dietary decisions.