Citation

Guarin-Ardila JA, Montero-Ariza R, Astudillo-García CI, Fernández-Niño JA. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020; 17(1): e17010035.

Affiliation

Departamento de Salud Pública, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla 081007, Colombia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph17010035

PMID

31861509

Abstract

Homicides are currently the third leading cause of death among young adults, and an increase has been reported during holidays. The aim of the present study was to explore whether an association exists between Carnival in Barranquilla, Colombia, and an increase in homicides in the city. We used mortality records to identify the number of daily homicides of men and women throughout the week of Carnival, and we compared those with records from all of standard days between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2015. Conditional fixed-effects models were used, stratified by time and adjusted by weather variables. The average number of homicides on Carnival days was found to be higher than on a standard day, with an OR of 2.34 (CI 95%: 1.19-4.58) for the occurrence of at least one male homicide per day during Carnival, and 1.22 (CI 95%: 1.22-7.36) for female homicides, adjusted by weather variables. The occurrence of homicides during Carnival was observed and was similar to findings for other holidays. Given that violence is a multifactorial phenomenon, the identification of the factors involved serves as a basis for evaluating whether current strategies have a positive effect on controlling it.

Language: en

Keywords

Colombia; homicide; time-series studies; violence