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Protecting Road Safety in the Philippines from Alcohol Industry Interference


Alcohol consumption is one of the major behavioral risk factors that affect public health and safety around the world. Global data shows that 1.35 million deaths resulted from road traffic crashes annually, with an estimated 5% to 35% of these deaths linked to driving under the influence of alcohol (or more commonly known as ‘drinkdriving’). Philippine government sources, particularly from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), have revealed a rapidly increasing number of deaths from road traffic crashes, from 8,406 deaths in 20105 to 11,360 in 2017,6 nearly a 35 percent increase in a span of seven years. The United Nations (UN) recognized the growing burden of road crashes globally; hence, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020 (or the Global Decade of Action) in 2010, which calls on countries to take multi-sectoral action to adopt comprehensive legislation to reduce deaths and injuries as a result of road crashes by the end of the decade in 2020. In 2015, the target “to halve the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents” by 2020 is reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which the UN adopted as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 3.6. To achieve this, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Regional Commissions prepared a Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011–2020), which identifies drink-driving measures among the road safety interventions that have been proven to be effective in reducing road traffic deaths and injuries. 


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