CHRONIC ALCOHOL ABUSE UP BY 17%
Addiction aid at ‘breaking point’
THE number of A&E cases due to alcohol abuse has soared 17% in 10 years.
It comes as addiction services are at “breaking point”, with fewer adults getting treatment than at any time since 2008/9.
In England some 600,000 adults are dependent on booze.
Yet councils plan to slash £34million from support services after drastic government funding cuts, Labour analysis shows. Just 80,000 alcoholics were in treatment in 2016/17, down 11,000 since 2013/14.
In the same period the number dependent on booze rose from 590,000 up to 606,000.
Labour is vowing to expand addiction support services when next in government.
Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth, whose alcoholic dad drank himself to death, will say: “When two-and-a-half million young people are growing up with a parent who has an alcohol misuse problem, we have a responsibility to act.
“Tory austerity has meant cutting services, pushing addiction services to breaking point.”
Some 337,000 hospital admissions in 2016/17 had booze as the main reason, according to NHS Digital – up 17% on 2006/7 when it was less than 300,000.
Around 24,000 English people died from alcohol-related causes in 2016, with an average age of 54.
It is estimated up to one in three GP visits are alcohol related. Problem drinkers see their GP twice as often as others.
Deaths from liver disease are up 400% since 1970 and 20% in 10 years, as they fell in much of the rest of the developed world.