The Global Status Report on Alcohol 2004 is a new edition of the Report published by WHO in 1999. This edition provides an update of the role of alcohol in global health and contains data not found in the earlier edition. The Report seeks to document what is known about alcohol consumption and drinking patterns among various population groups, alcohol's impact on health worldwide and what is needed on a global basis to prevent and reduce alcohol-related injury and disease. For this new edition, more emphasis has been placed on enhancing the comparability of data by setting clear and comprehensive priorities in terms of data collection. The printed part of report presents an overview and comparative analyses of the alcohol situation on a regional and global basis, including comparisons of individual countries using indicators such as alcohol use, prevalence rates and drinking patterns, and mortality trends. In a separate CD-ROM which comes with the printed overview, individual country profiles for all Member States for which sufficient data were available are presented. The indicators covered are trends in adult per capita consumption, prevalence/drinking patterns data, information regarding traditional and/or locally brewed alcoholic beverages, unrecorded alcohol consumption, health and social problems, and the social and economic costs of alcohol abuse. The Global Status Report on Alcohol 2004 provides a picture of the present state of knowledge on alcohol and health. The data it provides will hopefully stimulate further efforts to document the extent of alcohol use, alcohol-related problems, and policies in WHO Member States.