Dutch paediatrician launches clinic for children with alcohol problems

doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7571.720-c

BMJ 2006;333:720 (7 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7571.720-c

News roundup

Dutch paediatrician launches clinic for children with alcohol problems

Utrecht Tony Sheldon

A specialist hospital clinic for children with problems related to alcohol misuse is to be launched in the Netherlands. This follows a marked increase in admissions to hospital of children younger than 16 years old because of alcohol poisoning.

The initiative, the first of its kind in the Netherlands, is a response in particular to paediatricians’ concerns about long term brain damage. An alarming trend has emerged of younger, prepubescent girls being admitted with increasingly greater concentrations of alcohol in their blood.

The trend reinforces the findings of the 2004 European school survey project on alcohol and other drugs, which put Dutch 15 to16 year olds among the heaviest drinkers out of 35 countries.

One paediatrician, Nico van der Lely, has witnessed a 16-fold increase in hospital admissions of children under 16 at the Reinier de Graaf Gasthuis in Delft since the late 1990s, when one admission . . . [Full text of this article]

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