London: The World Health Organisation will scrap its guidance to women of childbearing age that they should not drink alcohol, conceding its draft advice was poorly formulated.

The guidance was contained in its Draft Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022-2030 and sparked a furious backlash from women’s rights campaigners who said it risked undermining the WHO’s credibility on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking exclusively to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Dag Revke, the WHO’s policy adviser on alcohol said the guidance was intended only to raise awareness about foetal alcohol disorder syndrome but agreed it was badly written.

The WHO calls for more awareness of the risks of drinking while pregnant.Credit:Fairfax Media

“It was just meant as the period where you are potentially carrying children and this is not generalising to all women in that age,” he said.

“It can be interpreted that we are saying that women of childbearing age should not drink alcohol and is a completely wrong interpretation and we will make sure that it’s not interpreted like that,” he said.

But he denied that it was a mistake.

“It was not a mistake, [the paragraph] lumped together too many things in one sentence, that is what has happened here.

“It comes out wrongly from the interpretation, we are completely honest about that,” he said.

Last week the WHO said: “Appropriate attention should be given to the prevention of the initiation of drinking among children and adolescents, prevention of drinking among pregnant women and women of childbearing age, and protection of people from pressures to drink, especially in societies with high levels of alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are encouraged to drink even more.”

The WHO wants to reduce the world’s “unacceptably high” alcohol consumption by 20 per cent compared to the amount consumed in 2010 with alcohol contributing to 3 million (5.3 per cent) of all deaths in 2016.

Asked if there was any medical evidence showing that women should refrain from drinking for the years leading up to their pregnancy in order to give birth to a healthy child, Revke said none existed.

“No, the point is that it is in the embryonic phase – the first week to eight weeks – considerable damage can happen there and that is very often before women know they’re pregnant.

“Almost 50 per cent of all pregnancies are not planned so this is about raising awareness, that is what we want to achieve,” he said.

He said the sentence was only ever included after pushback from groups working to prevent fetal alcohol disorder and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in earlier rounds of consultations.

A Senate inquiry found this year that FASD is “largely invisible and under-recognised in Australia” but could affect up to five per cent of the population with between two and nine per cent of babies born with the disorder each year.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) guidelines state that women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink alcohol to prevent harming their unborn child.

But the Senate inquiry found that Australia has one of the highest rates of prenatal alcohol exposure in the world.

Dag Revke said he hoped the backlash the WHO has experienced will raise awareness of the harm alcohol causes.

“If the media also can pick up on the incredible harm from alcohol in the world in the same way they picked up on this poorly formulated phrase, then perhaps we could really achieve something,” he said.

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