BOOZE TO BLAME FOR 15,000 AMBULANCE CALLS
Call for more action over alcohol link to injuries
BOOZE was a factor in more than 15,000 emergency callouts for ambulance crews, figures show.
The number is up on 2016, when there were 14,406 alcoholrelated incidents but down from a high in 2015 of 23,577.
A Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Conservatives found Glasgow had the highest number of instances in 2017, with 3783, followed by Edinburgh with 1674 and North Lanarkshire with 1279.
The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) said not all incidents are directly linked to alcohol but where drink has been recorded by crews as “additional factors” in logs.
The Tories said the SAS are struggling to deal with demand but the SNP said staffing has risen.
The Tories have campaigned for measures such as recovery centres to deal with people who have consumed too much alcohol at weekends, to take the strain off ambulances and A&E services.
Scottish Conservative public health spokeswoman Annie Wells said: “It’s clear people who have consumed too much alcohol are putting immense and unnecessary strain on the ambulance service.
“No one will be more annoyed than hardworking paramedics that this particular challenge stands in the way of helping patients who’ve fallen ill through no fault of their own.
“The SNP Government need to ensure ambulance staff are sufficiently resourced to deal with current challenges, and regrettably that includes alcohol.” A Scottish Government spokesman said: “SAS staffing has increased by nearly 24 per cent since 2006 – and we have increased the ambulance service budget by 46 per cent, to £237million, while we are committed to training a further 1000 paramedics by 2021.
“We’ve taken a number of actions to tackle alcohol misuse, including pressing ahead with minimum unit pricing and will be refreshing our alcohol strategy shortly.”