MORE than 50 people a month are being treated at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary after being assaulted.

And staff in the hospital’s casualty department are being attacked at the rate of almost one a month.

For the last three months of 2009 there were a total of 165 people treated at the HRI as a result of assaults on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

These figures include 61 people between Fridays and Sundays in October, 50 in November and 54 in December.

Figures also show there were 10 assaults on Accident and Emergency staff last year.

The figures were released as a new report from the NHS Information Centre revealed for the first time the pattern of people attending A&E due to assault.

Of the nearly 13.8million recorded attendances at A&E in 2008/09, 1.3% (181,568) were due to assault with attendances peaking sharply on Friday and Saturday nights.

The pattern was mirrored in Huddersfield with figures provided by the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust showing a similar picture.

The report – Accident and Emergency Attendances in England (Experimental Statistics) 2008/09 – also shows:

Sports injuries accounted for 2% of all recorded attendances;

Injuries through self-harm accounted at 0.7% of all recorded attendances and peaked each day at about midnight;

The age group between 20 and 29, both men and women, had the highest number of attendances at A&E;

The average waiting time was two hours, 12 minutes.

A spokeswoman for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust said: “This Trust is firmly of the view that all those who provide NHS services have the right to do so without fear of violence or abuse. “We encourage staff to report all incidents as part of our very robust zero tolerance policy on violence.”