There were over 3,300 discharges from Kerry and Cork hospitals for alcohol-related treatment last year.
A report by the Health Research Board on alcohol-related harm by HSE regional health area notes that alcohol-related hospitalisations put pressure on health services.
There was an increase in alcohol-related hospital discharges in Ireland in 2023 compared to the two previous years.
Author of the report, Anne Doyle, writes that although there’s been a decline in per capita use in Ireland recently, we are increasingly seeing the legacy of the exceptionally high alcohol use in the late 1990s and early 2000s – which is evident in the number of alcohol-related hospitalisations seen on a yearly basis.
In the HSE South West region, which is made up of Kerry and Cork, there were 3,310 alcohol-related hospital discharges last year – the second highest rate when adjusted for population behind Dublin/North East.
Around 73% of these were for mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol, and a further 16% were for alcohol-related liver disease.
According to the data, 73% of people in Kerry and Cork are current drinkers, 35% are hazardous drinkers, while 8.2% have an alcohol-use disorder, the lowest of the HSE regions.
There were also 920 cases in the South West of treatment received for alcohol as the main problem substance last year, which is around 124 per 100,000 population.
The report notes the data is an underestimate of the true prevalence of alcohol-related hospitalisations as ED and outpatient data, as well as that for private hospitals, are not collected.
Similarly, GPs do not report alcohol treatment data to the National Drug Treatment Reporting System, while the number of cases presenting for treatment for alcohol use is substantially lower than those with alcohol dependence, meaning the data is also an underestimate of treated alcohol use in Ireland.
The report writes that it’s evident that alcohol-related hospitalisations place significant pressure on already-stretched acute hospital services.
