Ketamine clinic opened at children's hospital

A children's hospital has launched a clinic to treat young people who are taking the street drug ketamine.

Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool is thought to be the first in the country to run a programme aimed specifically at minors.

Senior consultants at the hospital told the BBC it was believed Merseyside had a bigger problem with the drug than other areas.

In April, Liverpool council wrote to the government demanding the substance - a sedative that can have hallucinatory effects and also cause serious health problems - be reclassified as a Class A drug like heroin or cocaine.

The clinic began running at the hospital in May, and a second clinic later this week has had to be expanded due to the number of referrals, Ms Corbett said.

"We've talked to other paediatrics across the country, and, to our knowledge, nobody is seeing anyone under the age of 16 yet, but yet is the important word," paediatric consultant Harriet Corbett she told BBC Radio Merseyside.

Ms Corbett said: "I think there genuinely is a bigger problem here (Merseyside) at the moment than there is elsewhere," adding that there was a particular problem in the more rural areas of Merseyside.

"We've had to expand Friday's clinic to put in some extra slots as we have had so many children referred in."

She said if the hospital could "get young people to come through their period of use and see the other side and realise life can be better without it, then we're doing everybody a huge favour".

In England, the number of under-18s entering drug treatment who described ketamine as one of their problem substances rose from 335 to 917 between 2020-21 and 2023-24, according to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System,

Government figures also showed a rise in the number of children and young people aged under 17 reporting problems with ketamine, going up from 512 in 2021 to 2022 to 1,201 in 2023 to 2024.

Liverpool councillor Lynnie Hinnigan told city leaders in April that she had heard first-hand from a 20-year-old addict who had "admitted to a room of strangers how she had to wear adult pull-ups, didn't want to die, and was going to leave the session and reuse as she couldn't cope with the pain".

Ketamine is widely used in the NHS as an anaesthetic, sedative and pain reliever, and is also commonly used on animals.

It is also thought of as a party drug due to its hallucinogenic effects.

The substance usually comes as a crystalline powder or liquid and can cause serious health problems including irreversible damage to the bladder and kidneys.

Assistant coroner for Dorset, Richard Middleton, said ketamine cystitis was an "emerging epidemic" among young people after Joshua Leatham-Prosser was found dead at his home in Weymouth on 5 June 2024, having used the drug since 2019.

Mr Middleton said the impact on his bladder was "akin to acid attacks on the skin".

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