By Patricia Watson, Features Co-ordinatorVIOLENCE - RESULTING in ice pick stab wounds, machete and knife gashes and gunshot injuries - cost the Government $500 million last year alone. Dr. Elizabeth Ward, the director of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health, noted that last year, the Government spent $1 billion on injuries, 50 per cent of which were as a result of violence.
"Most injuries we treat are of young males, ages 10 to 29 years old. Almost all were fighting with acquaintances using sharp implements such as cutlasses, ice picks and knives," she explained.
Tomorrow, an international conference on violence, organised by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), will begin in Kingston at the Jamaica Conference Centre. The conference will end on Thursday.
Eleven per cent of the budget for the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), goes towards treating patients involved in some form of violence, Dr. Ward said. At KPH too, one in three electives per week are cases of injury due to violence. Islandwide, of the total number of cases which turn up at the Accident and Emergency Unit, between 8 and 12 per cent are due to violence. Violence-related injuries accounted for 35,000 visits to the Accident and Emergency room in 2002.
On average, Dr. Ward ex-plained that it cost $13,000 per day to treat each person once admitted to hospital. This amount could jump to $128,000 if the individual has to go to the intensive care unit for surgery or to be put on a ventilator.
"What we've found is that a lot of idleness is behind these injuries. We need to start at the primary level - at the schools, helping families with parenting skills. We know that in inner-city communities, 18 per cent of the children are separated from their mothers and 51 per from their fathers before the age of 11. In fact, the mean number of years of separation is eight years, meaning most are separated from a father from age three," Dr. Ward explained.
VIOLENCE THE NORM
But in addition to the separation, violence is a norm for many young people. It is how they are socialised, based on their exposure to violence.
Violence is not unique to Jamaica, but according to the World Health Organisation Global report on Violence and Health, it is "a universal scourge that tears at the fabric of communities and threatens the life, health and happiness of us all."
The report noted that each year 1.6 million people worldwide lose their lives to violence.
"For everyone who dies as a result of violence, many more are injured and suffer from a range of physical, sexual, reproductive and mental health problems."
Violence, the seminal study found was the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 44 years old worldwide.
