How many harmful incidents happen each year in South Africa?
Harmful incidents in this context refer mainly to poisoning by ingestion, fire and burns. It is impossible to come up with definitive figures because it is so difficult to get hold of this sort of data. Many cases do not reach the formal healthcare system. For those cases that do reach the healthcare system, it is difficult to get meaningful data. Hospitals are generally not geared to recording data for the prioritisation of preventative services and rather focus on curative services. For hospitals, diagnosis rather than injury is more useful for effective treatment and when patients are referred to secondary and tertiary facilities to higher level facilities, the external cause of injury is not always noted. In terms of fires, statistics are very hard to come by. The majority of fire incidents responded to have an unknown cause. One reason is the fear of reprisal. The persons in whose home the fire started, fear being victimised. The nature of fire mean that it will be hard to determi
