Evaluating the progress of alcohol policies in Burundi against the WHO ‘best buy’ interventions: implications for public health.
Abstract
Introduction: Alcohol use is a major global health risk, with Global South countries experiencing greater harm per litre of alcohol consumed than those in the Global North. In Burundi, a country with a low-income economy, 16.6% of people aged 15 and above binge drink, and over 30% of women drink during pregnancy. This paper examines current alcohol policies in Burundi, how well they match the WHO ‘best buy’ policy options, and stakeholder views on their implementation.
Methods: We searched for policy documents via online searches, visits to government offices, and snowball sampling from contact with key stakeholders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten stakeholders. The WHO-European Action Plan to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol (EAPA) tool was used to analyse the extent to which Burundi has adopted recommended policy standards. Interviews were thematically analysed using NVivo software.
Results: Only nine of the 34 WHO-EAPA indicators are addressed, seven out of 34 indicators are mentioned with no clear actions, and 18 are not addressed in the eight policy documents that met our inclusion criteria. The large proportion of indicators absent from Burundi policy relate to availability, pricing and taxation, drinking-driving, taxation, and marketing. An absence of legislation to support existing policies, industry interference, corruption, and cultural norms around alcohol were identified as key barriers to implementation.
Conclusions: Burundi should enact laws to support existing policies and design regulations targeting marketing and advertising. Government and civil society coalitions should report and address any alcohol industry influence in policymaking and implementation.
In consideration of publishing this article the authors transfer, assign, or otherwise convey all copyright ownership to the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. By this transfer, the article becomes the property of the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research and may not be published elsewhere without written permission from the journal.
This transfer of copyright also implies transfer of rights for printed, electronic, microfilm, and facsimile publication. The author(s) will receive no royalty or other monetary compensation for transferring the copyright of the article to the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. IJADR, in turn, grants each author the right to republish the article, without paying royalties to IJADR, in any book of which he or she is the author or editor, subject to the express conditions that (a) the author notify the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research in writing of this republication and (b) a credit line attributes the original publication to the International Journal Of Alcohol and Drug Research.
Licence:
Articles are licenced with a Creative Commons License Deed -- you are free to share articles but must give appropriate attribution, may not use for commercial purposes or distribute modified works. See CC/BY-NC/ND/4.0/.
Author Agreement:
As the submitting author, and on behalf of all of the manuscript authors I agree with the terms above relating to the copyright transfer of the manuscript to the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research.
