Hospital admissions for violence soar

|PIC1|The number of hospital admissions in England due to violence has soared by 30 percent in four years with far more people affected in poor areas than rich ones, a study said on Tuesday.

Researchers said more than 120,000 people were admitted to hospital emergency wards between 2002 and 2006 as a direct result of violence.

In all, at least 2.5 million people in England and Wales are the victims of violence every year, which in 2003 cost the country 24.4 billion pounds and the NHS alone 2.2 billion pounds, the report said.

The team from the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University said the number of emergency admissions from violence rose almost 30 percent between 2002 and 2006.

The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, also found admission rates were six times higher in poor areas.

"The direct contribution violence makes to health inequalities is likely to be significant, with around 30,000 mainly poorer individuals requiring emergency admissions each year and 10 times that number presenting to A&E," the researchers said.

The report comes on the same day that Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government releases its Youth Crime Action Plan amid concern about a rising toll of teenagers dying from violence on the street.

The study revealed that children under 15 in the poorest fifth of the country were five times more likely to be admitted to hospital as victims of violence than those in the most affluent fifth.

"This is yet further damning evidence of our broken society under Labour, as the government fails to address both crime and the causes of crime," Conservative shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said of the latest figures.

"The vulnerable, living in deprived areas, are suffering the most from Labour's serial failure. The Government's failure to tackle crime hits the poorest the hardest."

On Monday, Brown said the government was taking a range of measures to tackle knife crime, including more visible policing, greater stop-and-search powers, increasing use of metal detectors and tougher prison sentences or community punishments.

The youth action plan will also include plans to evict families from their homes if they fail to control their children.