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Medical officers from the United Kingdom have invited the public to take part in the formulation of the guidelines promoting awareness on the relationship between alcohol intake and cancer.

The initiatives have sprung from recent findings that drinking alcohol can cause not just one but seven types of cancer.

Health officials strongly feel that there is a need to review the previous guidance since it was issued in the mid-1990s. Officials say that there have been changes in the last twenty years and the review will help people made aware of the risks in taking alcohol.

Authorities also underscore the importance of drumming up awareness of the risk to the public. Colin Shevills of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK noted in a statement that only 1 in 10 people are aware of the impact of alcohol intake on their health and no amount of alcohol level can protect them from cancer.

"This important review reinforces the need for the public to be made aware of the causal link between alcohol and cancer,” Shevills wrote in a statement.

A new analysis based on evidence gathered through the years revealed that alcohol causes seven types of cancer, including oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast cancers.

Published in the scientific journal ‘Addiction,’ Jennie Connor of the preventive and social medicine department at Otago University in New Zealand says the new findings provides enough evidence proving that drinking is a direct cause of cancer. Connor added that the study even suggested that drinking may even cause skin, prostate, and pancreatic cancer.

The study is based on reviews of undertaken in the past ten years by the World Cancer Research Fund; the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization, and few others related organizations.

In reviewing the guidelines on alcohol intake, UK health officials said the public are encouraged “to take this opportunity to provide their views.”