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Child stab wound hospital admissions up 86pc in four years

Children admitted to hospital with stab wounds up 86 per cent in four years, new analysis shows - i-Images Picture Agency
Children admitted to hospital with stab wounds up 86 per cent in four years, new analysis shows - i-Images Picture Agency

The number of children being admitted to hospitals in England with stab wounds is up 86 percent in four years, according to figures. 

Statistics compiled by the NHS showed a big rise in the number of people receiving treatment for assaults by sharp object - most commonly a knife. 

More than 5,000 people were admitted to hospitals in England, according to the most recent figures analysed by the BBC, which is up 14 percent for the same time period last year and up 40 percent compared to four years ago.

Those treated under the age of 18 has climbed by 86 percent since 2014, as it emerged the average age of knife attack victims is getting younger.

More than one in 10 of the 5,000 treated for stab wounds in hospitals last year in England were under the age of 18. 

Of those, more than 50 were children between 10 and 14 years old, and four were under nine years old.

Among the statistics is understood to be eight-year-old Mylee Billingham, who was stabbed to death by her father William Billingham at his home in Walsall in January

The figures come amid a surge in London knife crime, which Mayor Sadiq Khan conceded would take a decade to solve. Earlier this month the total number of murders in the capital surpassed that for the whole of 2017.