Tag: gun violence

Categories : Injury & TraumaTags :

SA’s Injury Statistics are not Accurate, Experts Warn

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

By Sonia A. Rao for GroundUp

Reporting of gun crime in South Africa is wildly inaccurate, work by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) suggests. This is because the official death notification form does not distinguish between gun deaths from accidents and gun deaths from homicide.

The SAMRC has called on the government to update the country’s official death notification form. In a September 2023 South African Medical Journal (SAMJ) editorial, researchers and scientists Pam Groenewald, Richard Matzopoulos, Estevão Afonso and Debbie Bradshaw, say the form does not comply with international standards. While the World Health Organisation recommends reporting manner of death on the medical certificate for cause of death, South Africa’s form does not allow this, they say.

As a result, South Africa does not have accurate information on injury statistics, says Groenewald, a specialist scientist at SAMRC.

“Given that South Africa has got a really high injury burden, this is really not acceptable,” she said.

The SAMRC has pointed out that accurate, timely mortality data for natural and non-natural deaths is especially important after the Covid pandemic.

In a press release, the SAMRC said natural deaths had spiked during Covid waves, while injuries had fallen during government-imposed lockdowns and alcohol sales bans. “Of particular concern is the significant impact of alcohol bans on injury-related deaths,” the council said.

The release also said the statistics are necessary to develop and monitor programs to reduce injuries and violence, and track Sustainable Development Goals of road traffic injury reduction, gender equality and reducing violence-related death rates.

South Africa’s official mortality statistics overestimate accidental injuries and underestimate homicides, transport and suicide deaths, according to a research report also published in the September 2023 SAMJ.

In official death notification form data from Stats SA for 2017, nearly 99% of firearm deaths were classified as accidental and only 1% as homicide. But the SAMRC’s National Cause-of-Death Validation Project (NCoDV) found more than 88% of firearm deaths were homicide, and its Injury Mortality Survey (IMS) found more than 93%.

Similar differences occurred for suicides. Only 0.3% of firearm deaths were recorded as suicide in the 2017 Stats SA data, but they were recorded as 7% in NCoDV and IMS data.

The research report says NCoDV and IMS provide more detailed and consistent data on causes of injury than the death notification form, but they are costly and time-consuming, and not feasible for routine surveillance.

“It costs a lot of money, when we could be getting this data in with every death certificate that gets completed,” Groenewald says.

She says the SAMRC has been asking for an updated death certificate form since 2012.

No annual mortality report since 2018

Also, Stats SA has not published an updated mortality report since the pandemic. The last official report was released in 2021 for the year 2018.

“We’ve got no cause-of-death data at all, not just injuries, nothing. We haven’t seen a death certificate from during the Covid period; we don’t know what doctors have reported,” she said. “It’s mind boggling.”

Felicia Sithole, deputy director of media relations for Stats SA, said in a statement that the Mortality and Causes of Death report had been delayed by a backlog of processing death notification forms as a result of the Covid lockdown, and because of Census 2022 work.

Sithole said Stats SA is committed to publishing the 2019 and 2020 Mortality and Causes of Death reports by the end of March 2024.

“Stats SA fully comprehends the importance of the Mortality and Causes of Death release, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, and acknowledges that our data must conform to international standards,” she said.

The SAMRC report also calls for the dormant National Forensic Pathology Services Committee to be reactivated. This would help improve data quality, the report says. The committee, established in 2014, has been inactive since 2018/9.

Foster Mohale, a media officer for the Department of Health, said the Minister of Health is in the process of appointing a new National Forensic Pathology Services Committee.

The Department of Home Affairs had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.

Republished from GroundUp under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Source: GroundUp

Categories : General InterestTags :

US Doctor Gives His Life Stopping Church Shooting

On By ModernMedia
Candle-lit vigil
Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash

A US doctor has been hailed as a hero after he gave his life to stop a gunman firing upon a church congregation.

The Orange County Sherriff’s Department hailed the doctor’s ultimate sacrifice following the tragic shooting, which took place at a the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, California, on Sunday afternoon.

John Cheng, MD, 52, was attending a church lunch with his mother when 68-year-old David Chou chained the doors shut and opened fire on a group of elderly parishioners.

Acting without hesitation, Dr Cheng, a prominent sports medicine physician, quickly tackled the suspect, allowing church members to restrain him, according to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

When he leapt to the defence, Dr Cheng sustained multiple gunshot wounds and succumbed to his injuries. He leaves behind his wife and two children, as well as devastated colleagues at his practice, who referred to him as a protector, ABC 7 reported.

“Officials said that were it not for the actions of Dr Cheng, there most certainly would have been many more lives lost,” said the California Medical Association in a statement released a day after the shooting.

“Our nation continues to be plagued by an epidemic of gun violence,” they wrote. “Physicians as healers are often on the front lines of these tragic events, treating the wounds of the victims of gun violence.”

Five other victims sustained gunshot wounds and were taken to local hospitals for treatment. The suspected shooter, who is in custody and being charged with murder and attempted murder, allegedly drove from Las Vegas to attack the church, at which members of the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church have had a space since 2009. He knew no-one at the church but spent about an hour mingling with them to gain their trust, NPR reported.

The shooting is being investigated as a hate crime, since the suspect was reportedly upset about political tensions involving China and Taiwan, the sheriff’s department noted.

At a media briefing, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer praised Dr Cheng’s actions.

Dr Cheng knew that there were many parishioners at risk, Spitzer said. He charged across the room, and did everything he possibly could to disable the assailant. “He sacrificed himself so that others could live,” he added.

Don Barnes, the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner, was in agreement, saying that “there is no doubt that Dr. Cheng’s actions that day saved the lives of many other church members. He is a hero and will be remembered by this community as such.”

Source: MedPage Today