A HEALTH boss has said the North West would have to go into rehab for excessive boozing if it was a person.

Dominic Harrison, deputy regional director for public health at NHS North West, spoke on the eve of a major conference on the region's alcohol problem.

In East Lancashire, more than 4,500 hospital beds are being taken up by people with chronic alcohol problems.

And 3,500 violent crimes are fuelled by booze every year in the area, figures from the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University show.

The Lancashire Telegraph has also revealed how more than 350 East Lancashire children had been rushed to hospital emergency departments suffering the effects of binge drinking in the last three years.

And more women in East Lancashire also die earlier through booze than virtually anywhere else in England. The figures are related to poverty, social deprivation and working class drinking habits.

Mr Harrison said: "If the North West Region was a person it would need counselling for alcohol dependence.

"The North West has a big alcohol problem. Collectively we are in danger of losing our capacity to manage alcohol sensibly.

"Unlike tobacco, alcohol is not fundamentally unhealthy.

"Alcohol can contribute to quality of life if it is managed sensibly.

"We need to look at the reasons why people are drinking in this way in our region, and what we can all do to manage our own drinking sensibly."

He said today's summit of health bosses at the JJB Stadium, Wigan was a step towards finding some answers.

He said: "We've set up a dedicated email account and we want local people of all ages to use this, to let us know why they think excessive drinking is such a problem in our communities and what should be done about it.

"This will be valuable information for us, and will help us to develop better programmes of prevention and treatment. The summit gives us an opportunity to take stock of what progress has been made to date and what more we can do to support local work on alcohol harm reduction in our communities."

More men die from alcohol-related liver disease in East Lancashire than the rest of England, with Blackburn with Darwen, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Burnley all in the top 20.

Comments can be sent to alcohol-survey@ljmu.ac.uk.