DOZENS of young people attending Derry’s MTV were treated in hospital for assault or drug and alcohol-related conditions.
Thirty people, some as young as 13, were brought to Altnagelvin Hospital’s accident and emergency departming A&E during and after Saturday’s Club MTV event at Ebrington Square.
Emergency Medical Consultant told BBC’s Radio Foyle that some of those admitted needed intensive care treatment.
He added that resources at the department had been “stretched to their limits”.
“There was a significant increase in attendances from early evening on Saturday through to the early hours of Sunday morning as a result of the concert,” Dr Bayliss BBC Radio Foyle.
“There was a large number of young people, ranging in age from around 13 to 25, who presented at the department, most of them intoxicated with alcohol and or recreational drugs.”
He said there was also an increase in the number of cases of assault and that injured patients said they had been assaulted by people who were drunk or high on drugs.
“I know it’s a night of fun for them, but when you’re stitching up their faces, you’re thinking this scar is a souvenir they’ll have for the rest of their lives,” said Dr Bayliss.
The debris left by those who attended the event at Ebrington Square. PIC MARK PATTERSON SHOW
He added that many of the additional patients were “extremely distressed” and required significant nursing support.
“Our usual challenging Saturday evening became a more dangerous environment for all our patients as our fixed staffing resources strived to cope with the additional workload,” he said.
The consultant warned parents to give “careful consideration” before allowing teenagers to attend such events in future.
Added Dr Bayliss: “The drugs that are being peddled at these concerts are not regulated in any way and there is no way of knowing the dangers of consuming them, especially when washed down with alcohol.
“It can lead to extreme vulnerability to all forms of assault as they lose their ability to object to whatever might happen to them.”
Legacy Promotions, which organised the concert, is considering rethinking its policy of allowing under-18s to attend such events in future.
The company said there was strict security and a medical triage system within Ebrington, but claimed the problem stemmed from concert-goers drinking before the event.
“At the gates we were dealing with people who were inebriated under the age of 18,” said Robert Allen from the company.
“We have a duty of care to either treat them there or take them to our triage. Regardless of what age they are, we had to treat them.”
He said the organisers do not want “the responsibility of having to look after under age” concert-goers who have taken alcohol outside the event and that staff turned away “probably a few hundred” young people because they had consumed excess alcohol.
