Only a quarter of people sleep the eight hours each night that doctors recommend, medical experts said yesterday, while emphasizing that children are going to bed later than ever.

The head of the Research Center for Sleep at the Evangelismos Hospital in Athens, Manos Vagiakis, said that figures from 1980 showed that 45 percent of people slept at least eight hours a day then. Only 25 percent of people sleep that much now, he said.

To mark World Sleep Day today, Vagiakis also revealed that 15 percent of people suffer from sleeping problems.

He said that one of the key problems is that children are increasingly staying up late. He said that 76 percent of boys and 64 percent of girls under the age of 15 go to bed after 11 p.m. – more than double the figures in 1990.