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Affiliation
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General Surgery Department, Trauma Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Science, P.O. Box 71345-1876, Shiraz, Iran. |
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Abstract
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As we know, an important factor with significant impact on etiology of burns is the socioeconomic status of the patients. In this way, sometimes the economic policies of the government can affect burn etiology. Sometimes, it is predictable as what happens after disasters such as war, earthquake, etc, but, in other situations it is not predictable.
Last year in our country, the government elected to distribute fuel on the basis of an electronic-based program in which every car had an electronic card with limited fuel quantity and if a person needed more fuel, he/she was obliged to pay more for it (Fuel rationing). Although it was engendered to control the rate of fuel consumption, which is very important for developing countries, it had some awful side effects that no one had considered. In the 2–3 months following this decision, the number of patients who were burned with fuel dramatically increased. The cause was obvious: people tried to store fuel in their homes because of fuel shortage. So, it was accessible for children and some used it non-intentionally instead of oil in the heaters. But its most striking result was self-inflicted burns! We had at least three cases of self-inflicted burns in the first month following this event leading to death (because fuel was easily available and the victims used it for suicide attempts that unfortunately caused severe burn and finally death). It was interesting that instead of these events in the burn center, the rate of motor and car crashes dramatically decreased during this period in our referral trauma center (because the people tried to store the fuel and did not use their vehicles). But after 3–4 months, this pattern of injury gradually subsided and almost returned to normal as before.
What is the key point? According to this summary, it is obvious that it was just a short term side effect of fear of the people from fuel crisis and after 3–4 months with instructions on broadcasting systems people learned that by means of programmed fuel consumption they can live as easily as before and there is no need for further fuel storage.
The key point is that if the government was aware of this possible impact of economy on public health, may be, these disadvantages would not happen.
Our goal for writing this article is that, may be a good announcement by broadcasting systems before such decisions will prevent such irreversible disadvantages and in fact, it is very important for developing countries in which similar issues may happen.
Language: en |