London: Young “binge “drinkers” in the UK are likely to die before their parents, a top health official has warned.

National Health Service consultant, Dr Hugh Kennedy said that figures showed a 44 per cent increase for alcohol-related admissions at the Norfolk hospital where he works. And one in ten of the patients was under 18 – the legal age to drink alcohol in the UK.

Dr Hugh Kennedy said the people he was seeing were in their 20s and 30s and had already severaly damaged their bodies through alcohol abuse. He said the cheap alcohol promotions in City centre bars were encouraging the abuse.

These young people are already suffering serious physicial symptoms such as cirrhosis of the liver, heart trouble, strokes, fits, jaundice, internal bleeding and brain damage,he said.

Dr Kennedy’s Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital revealed that its A&E department treated 1,422 patients for alcohol-related injuries and illnesses in the first four months of this year – up from 989 period last year.

The UK’s Institute of Alcohol Studies. said the drinking pattern of these youngers meant they were likely to die before their parents.

Liver specialist Dr Christopher Record backed the findings saying that he was now seeing people with serious liver disease in their late 20s and 30s whereas the average aged used to be 50.

Dr Record, a consultant and Newcastle University lecturer. said: ‘The situation is very serious and it is only going to get worse. People don’t know they are damaging their liver until it is too late.

The warnings come only weeks before new laws allowing 24-hour drinking come into force.