The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a new report, according to which, more than one in 10 pregnant women accepted that they consumed alcohol in the last month. The report also suggested that one in 33 acknowledged at least one episode of binge-drinking.

The findings were not precisely encouraging, if one considers that the US health officials have set a target to eradicate all binge-drinking by pregnant women by the year 2020 and to restrict the prevalence of other drinking to just 2%.

The report authors serves in the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. They wrote, “There is a need for a comprehensive approach to reduce alcohol use and binge drinking among pregnant women”.

For the report, the researchers examined data collected between 2011 and 2013 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and interviewers asked for a random sample of households from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Over 200,000 women of childbearing age, between 18 and 44 years old, reverted back to interviewers. They included 8,383 women who said they were pregnant.

Drinking was usual in women who weren’t pregnant as 53.6% said that they drank alcohol at least once in a month before their interview. But, when women came to know that they were pregnant, they were much less likely to drink as just 10.2% of them said that they consumed alcohol in last 30 days.