15-year-old drank 15 pints in one night

Paramedics are increasingly being called out to treat children in Norfolk who have overdosed on booze, including one case in which a teenager drank 15 pints of lager in one night.

The extent of the county's under-age alcohol problem has been revealed after ambulance crews assisted nearly 200 under 18s who had drunk too much alcohol in just one year.

In one case, an ambulance was called after a 15-year-old boy downed 15 pints of Stella Artois lager in a single binge. Another incident involved a 12-year-old who drank a whole bottle of cider.

Today calls were made for children to think about the damage they are doing to themselves by drinking - and for parents to be more aware of what youngsters are up to at night.

Matthew Ware, spokesman for the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust, said: “If you are drunk, then by definition you have taken an overdose of alcohol. But there are there are probably many more calls we categorise as assaults and falls and so on.

“In quite a lot of these call-outs, the children did not go to hospital but were left in the care of their parents.

“We would rather not be attending cases like that, when there are people in more urgent need suffering things like cardiac arrests.”

Figures from the trust show that between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2007 crews treated 197 under 18s in Norfolk who had been drinking. It is thought that many other call-outs to children could be drink-related, such as trips and falls.

As previously revealed by the Evening News, alcohol abuse and binge drinking is resulting in more and more youngsters being treated at accident and emergency (A&E) departments.

Last year, 507 people aged between 16 and 19 were treated in A& E at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital for alcohol-related problems, up from 180 in 2005.

Out these, 46 were admitted with an alcohol-related illness such as liver poisoning, kidney disease or a mental disorder related to drinking heavily.

The number of under-18s in the Norfolk area seeking long-term treatment for alcohol-related health problems also rose by 18pc in the past year.

In March, health officials voiced concerns about the sharp rise in the number of alcohol-related deaths in Norfolk.

Government statistics show that since 1997, the number of deaths in the county in which alcohol was a primary cause had risen from 50 a year to 81.

Norwich Evening News