I dearly wish I could have had some of our health reform gurus with me in Victoria recently when I attended the farm safety conference put on by the Canadian Coalition for Agricultural Safety and Rural Health.
When we were trying to save our rural hospital a few years ago, we were told by the spin doctors from Regina that we did not need emergency services because most of our emergency patients arrived at the hospital in private vehicles rather than by ambulance.
We quickly filled them in on the realities of life in the rural areas and, I’m pleased to say, our views were vindicated at the conference by Dr. Jim Merchant of the Institute for Rural and Environmental Health in Iowa. He told of a study in the most rural counties in Iowa which showed that fully 92.2 percent of rural people needing emergency care arrive at the hospital in private vehicles.
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He said the victims also usually arrive anywhere from four to 24 hours after the incident, a time lag which could affect survival. This points up, he said, the need for trauma personnel to serve rural areas and for every county to have a hospital no more than 20 to 25 miles apart.
In an interview after his talk, Merchant told me that his conclusions are based on the fact that farmers and farm families, and the rural population in general, are a high-risk group for injuries.
This was borne out by figures presented by Dr. Rob Brison of Kingston, a doctor who is gathering statistics on farm injuries, and Glen Blahey of Manitoba’s Department of Labor.
There was little cause for comfort in anything we heard that morning.
We were being addressed by bureaucrats about farm health and safety issues.
Phrases were being used such as “the economic burden of caring for those injured at an early age.”
Figures were presented: Brison: $12 million per year to care for those hospitalized as a result of farm accidents (1,200 at $10,000 each), $5 million per year for those injured (50,000 at $100 each). Blahey and Cathy Vanstone, also of Manitoba: a total measurable cost of $65,330 for caring for someone injured in a farm accident, personal costs not included.
Thus plans for more safety campaigns, more information to producers, more conferences, more work to make farm machinery safer and greater enforcement of regulations governing the movement of farm machinery on public roads.
