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HEALTH campaigners hit out last night after it was revealed that an eight-year-old girl has been treated for alcoholism.

The youngster started drinking as a Primary 4 pupil and quickly developed a "serious problem with alcohol".

She received help from Dundee-based Tayside Council for Alcohol after admitting she had started drinking regularly.

It is understood the vulnerable youngster is growing up surrounded by problem drinkers in her family - but has now been given support to turn her life around.

Tayside Council for Alcohol's children's services manager, Kathryn Baker, said the case reflected the growing pattern of heavy drinking in childhood.

She added: "These young people not only place themselves at risk as a result of drunken behaviour through unsafe sex, fights, accidents and acute alcohol poisoning, but are often laying the foundations for a pattern of heavy drinking which they follow through into their late teens and beyond."

Other experts say the shocking case is a shameful example of the nation's spiralling underage drinking epidemic.

And a health board have set up a specialist team to confront the issue after more than 400 drunk youngsters turned up at A&E units last year.

Campaigners say the worrying new wave of primary school alcoholics flies in the face of the crusade to reverse the nation's shocking relationship with booze, which costs the NHS in Scotland £110million a year.

And they warn of an even greater health time-bomb for future generations of Scots, already burdened with the "sick man of Europe" label.

Tory health spokesman Murdo Fraser said: "These figures are extremely disturbing and confirm the already serious problem with underage drinking is getting worse.

"We have a pitiful rate of prosecutions for people who buy alcohol for children, yet here we clearly have plenty of youngsters being able to get their hands on vast quantities of it.

"There needs to be more rigorous enforcement of the laws on alcohol sales, as children starting to drink at such a young age clearly does not bode well for the future health of the nation. This is very worrying."

The worst figures were in hospitals in the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde area, where 120 children aged 14 and under were hospitalised with alcohol related conditions in 2010, while a further 309 youngsters aged 15 to 17 received hospital treatment.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have drafted specific guidance for staff treating drunk children in recognition of the scale of the crisis.

In Dundee, Ninewells Hospital treated 306 underage victims of drink in A&E throughout 2010, with 196 teenage drinkers aged 16 to 17 requiring emergency treatment.

Alcohol Focus Scotland spokesman Barbara O'Donnell said last night: "We need to do much more to protect children from alcohol-related harm."

SHOCKING STATISTICS

Three kids a day are thrown out of school in Scotland for drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

One in seven kids quizzed by the Red Cross said they had been in an emergency involving a drunken friend in the previous year.

Between 2001 and 2008, four nine-year-olds died from alcohol poisoning. Two boys aged 12, two 14-year-old girls and three 16-year-olds died in the same period.

A total of 165 kids in Scotland needed medical help due to booze between 2004 and 2007.

They included two babies and a one-year-old who were born to alcoholic mothers. Another 23 had withdrawal symptoms.