City's '100,000 problem drinkers'

More than 100,000 people in the city are thought to be abusing alcohol

More than 100,000 people are drinking alcohol at dangerous levels in a South Yorkshire city, a conference called to deal with the problem has heard.

Health officials have revealed that 20% of Sheffield's population are drinking so heavily that the effects are putting strain on the emergency services.

One city councillor told the gathering that he watched his 32-year-old daughter drink herself to death.

Now a £100,000 scheme has been launched to tackle the alcohol-fuelled culture.

A vivid picture of the city's relationship with excessive drinking was painted at the conference in the city hall.

Over the past 12 months there were 6,500 alcohol-related admission to hospitals across the city, health service figures showed.

Health chiefs, senior police officers, MPs and members of the licensed trade attended the meeting to try to find a way of dealing with the consequences of alcohol abuse in the city.

And as the Liberal Democrat leader and city MP Nick Clegg called for a minimum price to be set for alcohol, one councillor revealed he watched his daughter die from alcohol-related liver disease.

Councillor Clive Skelton joined the summit to discuss the city-wide social and legal fallout from abusive drinking.

Councillor Clive Skelton's daughter died from alcohol-related liver disease

Mr Skelton's daughter, Donna, died in July.

He said that at 17-years-old she was a fresh faced youngster, but aged 32, and after 13 years of drinking she was hugely bloated.

"She was drinking five litres of sherry a day, she had passed out outside an off licence and was taken to the Northern General Hospital and she died just under three days later.

"The death certificate said alcoholic liver disease, but I think everything had just shut down.

"She was in extreme pain because everything had swollen so much internally that all her organs were being crushed.

"It's an awful way to die.

"I think people generally think of an alcoholic as the bumbling idiot in the streets, throwing up somewhere or somebody who gets thrown out of a nightclub, someone who's had three or four too many and causes a fight.

"Alcoholism is a sickness, an illness, and the more we can do to highlight that the better it will be, I think."