Alcohol consumption on rise in Goa: survey 

Panaji: Consumption of alcohol has gone up among men and women while use of tobacco has gone down in Goa, according to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16.

The survey, published in the Economic Survey report 2015-16 and tabled in the ongoing Assembly session, indicated that in Goa, 44.7 per cent men consume alcohol, which is an increase from 40 per cent recorded during 2005-06 NFHS.

The percentage of women consuming alcohol has also gone up from 2.1 per cent a decade ago to 4.2 per cent during 2015-16. Interestingly, a higher percentage of women in rural areas consume alcohol against the urban, but in case of men, the trend is opposite, as about 49.4 per cent men from urban areas consume alcohol, as against 37 per cent in rural areas.

The NFHS, however, said tobacco consumption has gone down among men and women in urban and rural areas. From 4.4 per cent women using any kind of tobacco during 2005-06, the percentage has come down to 1.9 during the latest survey. In case of men, 27.8 per cent used to consume tobacco of any kind during 2005-06, which has now scaled down to 20.8 per cent, which includes 22.1 per cent from urban and 18.6 per cent from rural areas.

The survey has also examined other indicators which show that 9.8 per cent of women are married before age of 18, which is a drop from 11.7 per cent recorded a decade back.

Breaking the myth that rural people get their daughters married early, the NFHS has found that 14.8 per cent urban and 2.7 per cent rural women get married before the age of 18.

Besides, the survey also said that the method of male sterilisation which was adopted earlier as a means of family planning, is not being practised anymore.

None of the males from urban and rural areas got sterilised while 0.1 per cent males had opted for this method during the survey conducted in 2005-06. The percentage of female sterilisation has also gone down to 16.3 per cent during the recent survey, as against 25.8 per cent 10 years back.

PTI