Drink sends 1,000 children a year to hospital

Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent , "Drink sends 1,000 children a
year to hospital", Telegraph, February 24, 2008,
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../ndrink124.xml

More than 1,000 children under the age of 14 are being admitted to
hospital every year as a result of binge drinking, new figures show.

Experts said that the alarming figures showed a "time bomb" facing the
country, warning that patients as young as 20 are being diagnosed with
irreversible liver damage.

Doctors said that without urgent action the spread of drinking among
Britain's children would "destroy a generation". In England alone last
year, 1,340 under-14s were admitted to hospitals because of alcohol
problems.

Dr Rajiv Jalan, a liver expert from the Institute of Hepatology, said
that doctors fear five years of childhood drinking could do as much
damage as two decades in adulthood. He said that alcohol had a massive
effect on a growing child, preventing the proper growth of all the
organs, including the brain.

"We are now seeing children as young as 10 and 11 drinking," he said.
"We are already seeing 20-year-olds with cirrhosis of the liver and it
is only a matter of time before we see that in teenagers.

"We need to act now, because if we wait 20 years we will destroy a
generation. It usually takes about 10 or 20 years of drinking above
safe limits to cause irreparable damage in adults, but we think it
could be as little as five in children."

The figures, revealed in a parliamentary answer, show that every week
26 children below the age of 14 are admitted for hospital treatment
for a medical problem relating to alcohol abuse.

But the statistics do not include hundreds of children who were
monitored in Accident and Emergency departments as outpatients after
suffering the ill-effects of alcohol, before being sent home. In
total, more than 5,000 under-16s were admitted by hospitals for an
alcohol problem in 2006/2007, including the 1,340 children under 14.

The problem of young drinkers is greatest in the North West, where
hospitals admitted almost 400 of the youngest patients.

The British Medical Association called last week for government action
to limit the sale of cut-price alcohol, saying that the pricing and
promotion of deals was fuelling an "alcohol epidemic". It called for
an end to happy hours in pubs and cut-price supermarket deals.

Sarah Matthews, from the British Liver Trust charity, described the
new figures, revealed by Dawn Primarolo, the health minister, as "a
very alarming indication that Britain is facing a time bomb", with
liver disease now the fifth biggest killer. She backed the BMA's calls
for the price of alcohol to be increased and gave warning that too
much drink was available at "pocket money prices".

The Government has promised to carry out research on alcohol pricing
later this year. Martin Shalley, an A&E consultant and president of
the British Association for Emergency Medicine, said that he was
"deeply concerned" about the increasing number of pre-teen children
arriving at casualty departments in a dangerously drunken state.

"We have seen 11-year-olds who have lost consciousness after raiding
their parents' drinks cabinet, young girls unconscious. Children are
starting younger and younger and that is very frightening."

Mr Shalley described the sale of cans of lager for 22p in some
supermarkets as irresponsible and called for tougher restrictions on
pricing.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said that the
figures demonstrated that this country had "entirely failed" in its
attempts to control childhood drinking.

He said: "We need to clamp down on shops which sell to under age
children, and we need parents to realise just how serious this is."

Frank Soodeen, from the charity Alcohol Concern, said that parents
needed to take the problem of childhood drinking far more seriously.

"Sometimes, parents are grateful their kids are 'only' drinking, not
taking drugs, and they don't do enough to control it," he said. "When
it comes to kids as young as 11, they aren't usually buying the
alcohol themselves, there are often friends or family buying it on
their behalf."

The figures follow an investigation by The Daily Telegraph which shows
that the number of alcohol-related crimes has risen by 43 per cent
since Labour introduced laws allowing 24-hour drinking.

On Tuesday, the Government will release the results of a review by
Gordon Brown into the impact of the change in opening hours.