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Doctors call for MUP to tackle A&E crisis
A group of British doctors are calling for the implementation of a 50p minimum unit price for alcohol in order to alleviate the strain on hospital accident and emergency departments.
Doctors are calling for a 50p MUP for alcohol to ease pressures on hospital emergency departments
In a letter to The Telegraph, 20 senior health professionals demanded an end to cheap alcohol after recent figures revealed 20% of A&E admittances were alcohol-related.
At weekends, this figures quadruples to 80% on Friday and Saturday nights.
Those who signed the letter included Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, pas president of the Royal College of Physicians and chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, Dr Kieran Moriarty, alcohol services lead at the British Society of Gastroenterology, Dr Adrian Boyle, from the College of Emergency Medicine, Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, and Dr Dominique Florin, medical director of the Medical Council on Alcohol.
“The current A&E crisis is being compounded by the failure of policymakers to tackle the impact of excessive alcohol consumption,” the doctors wrote. “However, successive governments have failed to enact evidence-based policies that would save lives and ease pressure on the health, policing and criminal justice systems.
“A 50p minimum unit price for alcohol, regulation to protect children from alcohol marketing, improved alcohol labelling and the establishment of alcohol care teams with specialist consultants and nurses are simple measures, none of which would punish responsible drinkers, that must be adopted urgently in order to reduce pressures on A&E departments.”
Data published last week revealed the NHS is experiencing its worst emergency performance in 10 years, with nearly 21,000 patients having to wait between four and 12 hours on trolleys in the two weeks over Christmas.
Two weeks ago, Dr Cliff Mann, the president of the College of Emergency Medicine, which represents A&E doctors, urged police to arrest more drunk people to reduce pressures on A&E departments.
He encouraged a “zero-tolerance” strategy towards binge drinking resulting in those behaving in a drunk and disorderly fashion to be arrested, charged and given a criminal record.