U.S. Says Preventable
Injuries Serious Health Threat
Excerpt By Paul Simao, Reuters Health

Deaths and injuries due to accidents and violent crime have reached epidemic levels in the United States and pose a threat to the nation's economic and social well-being, federal health officials said on Monday.

Injury is the top killer of Americans in the first four decades of life and costs the nation at least $260 billion in health care, lost productivity and other expenses each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One in 10 people ends up in an emergency room each year as a result of car crashes, falls or violent acts.

"We have to respond to this and need to treat it with the same urgency and the same crisis mentality that we treat other emerging public health threats," Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, said at the beginning of the agency's national injury prevention conference in Atlanta.

Gerberding, who has spent much of the past month responding to a deadly global outbreak of the pneumonia-like SARS disease, said a national strategy was required to make Americans less complacent about the risk of injury.

The CDC as well as the U.S. Surgeon General's Office and other agencies have been pushing for programs targeting groups at higher risk for injuries such as teen-agers and drunk drivers.

Officials said most of the nation's injuries could be prevented if legislators, health-care providers, religious leaders, teachers and parents joined a campaign to educate people at risk.

They cited recent efforts to promote the use of seat belts and discourage impaired driving as examples of cooperation between governments and individuals that had helped reduce the toll of deaths and injuries.

"This is a disease. We know how it spreads and we know what the cure is," said Dr. Jeffrey Runge, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "If we can just get all our community singing the same song."

A CDC study released on Monday suggested that the scale of the problem was, indeed, enormous.

The health-related costs of rape, physical assault, stalking and other violence directed at women by their husbands or partners is more than $5.8 billion per year, according to the CDC study, which was based on data from a 1995 survey.

The CDC said it was funding programs to support rape prevention and education efforts in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and eight U.S. territories.

Reference Source 89

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