'Ladettes'
clog casualty units after catfights
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news
Telegraph
- 19th September 2004
The number
of women who are seeking treatment at hospital casualty units after
being injured in drunken catfights is rising sharply, consultants
warn.
Late-night
brawls between women who have been binge-drinking are resulting
in horrific injuries such as facial wounds caused by "glassing",
broken jaws and bleeding scalps, where girls have had their hair
pulled out.
Hospital
staff, already under pressure from the rising numbers of emergency
admissions, say that they are struggling to cope with a "disturbing"
increase in the number of intoxicated women requiring treatment.
In some areas, the number of admissions has tripled in five years.
Don MacKechnie,
the chairman of the British Medical Association's accident and emergency
committee and a consultant at Rochdale Infirmary in Lancashire,
said that casualty units were being inundated with injured young
women, particularly at weekends.
"There
has certainly been a big increase and some of the fights are really
vicious," he said. "It is not just cuts and grazes, but
fractured hands as a result of them punching other people, and broken
cheekbones."
Amjid Muhammed,
a consultant at Calderdale Royal Infirmary in Halifax, West Yorkshire,
said that about 45 of the 300 patients seen in accident and emergency
over a typical weekend were women wounded in drunken brawls. Five
years ago, the typical figure was less than 15.
He blamed
the three-fold rise on the increasing tendency of groups of young
women to binge-drink. "There are women who are intoxicated
who are hurting themselves by toppling over or having an accident.
Then there are women who are injured in fights. It used to be men
but now women are turning up in this state - and even worse than
the men in some cases," he said.
Mr Muhammed
said that one worrying new trend was "glassing" - women
hitting other females with glasses or bottles. "That was something
we never used to see, but I have seen a few cases recently,"
he said. "It causes quite serious injuries - a facial glassing
can be very nasty."
Mr Muhammed
said that drunken women were putting pressure on already stretched
A & E departments. "They are adding to the growing numbers
of people that are coming in that need to be seen. Every extra patient
adds to the queue."
The extent
of the spiralling workload facing Britain's casualty units was underlined
earlier this month by figures from the Department of Health showing
that the number of admissions rose by up to a third in some hospitals
in the second quarter of this year, compared with the same period
last year.
The rising
tide of female violence has been blamed on the growing "ladette"
drinking culture, where women ape the worst excesses of loutish
male behaviour. Recent Government statistics have revealed that
almost a third of 18 to 24-year-old women binge drink.
Last year,
a report produced for the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit estimated
that treating illness and injuries caused by alcohol cost the National
Health Service £1.7 billion a year. According to doctors,
an increasing amount is spent on treating women.
Lt Col Andrew
Cope, a consultant at Peterborough District Hospital, said that
he was dealing with a rising number of women injured in drunken
fights.
"We
tend to have the stereotypical image of the male alcoholic, but
women are now involved too," he said. "We have seen women
hitting each other with glasses and bottles. The trouble is mainly
at weekends and bank holidays, when people have too much to drink
and get out of control."
A consultant
from Sunderland Royal Hospital, said that a quarter of the 300 admissions
in a busy 24-hour period were alcohol-related and were as likely
to involve women as men.
A spokesman
for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said that
women sustaining injuries while drunk was an "ongoing problem"
at weekends.
A study
by the Schools Health Education Unit in Exeter published last month
found that teenage girls were now drinking more alcohol than boys.
Research
by Lancaster University published this month will show that children
as young as 13 are displaying such "ladette behaviour".
Teachers interviewed in the study said that girls were drinking
at earlier ages and had become aggressively assertive and arrogant.
One teacher
from a secondary school in the north of England said: "Their
life is about going out and drinking, and it starts very early.
I was shocked when I found out that some of the 13- and 14-year-olds
quite regularly go out drinking at the weekend."
A pupil
at the school described girls in her class as "fighting a lot,
punching each other and pushing, swearing and spitting on each other.
You don't go near them because they will batter you, just like a
lad".
Alcohol
Concern, an organisation that campaigns to reduce alcohol abuse,
accused the drinks industry of targeting women through advertising
and the development of "women-friendly, attractive drinking
venues".
A spokesman
for the Portman Group, which speaks for the drinks industry, denied
that it glamorised alcohol, however.
"There
are now more than a million women who drink more than six units
in a session," she said.
"As
part of our 'Don't Do Drunk' campaign we are appealing to women's
vanity. We concentrate on what drinking does to their appearance
and their skin, as well as reminding them of the more serious risks
of chronic disease and the dangers of being assaulted or having
accidents while drunk."
