NZ’s high rate of head injury

NZ’s high rate of head injury and young people at risk of strokes to be discussed at this week’s Australasian rehabilitation conference in Queenstown

Older people are not the only ones at risk of having a stroke; New Zealand has a high rate of head injury and experts have difficulties motivating people to recover faster, a rehabilitation expert said today.

Professor Kathryn McPherson, the head of Auckland University of Technology’s (AUT) rehabilitation research centre, said these issues will be raised at the biennial Australasian rehabilitation conference in Queenstown this week.

McPherson said a stroke is thought of as an older person's disease but one in four people who suffer strokes in New Zealand are under 65: that is 25 percent or people who are of working age.
She has carried out clinical and research work on people after stroke or traumatic brain injury and she has also explored rheumatoid arthritis, chronic pain and life threatening illness.

``So people in their 50s and younger may have a stroke and so preventing this happening and helping people recover - is vital,’’ she said.

``New Zealand also has a higher rate of head injury than many other countries in the world. But we don't really know how many that is with estimates being somewhere between 18,000 and 26,000 a year. That is a lot of people. Our research centre at AUT has been funded to find out just how many there are.’’

McPherson said another important health issue is that disabled people who were disabled were at risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions but - as yet - the public health focus had been on advising non-disabled people how to limit their risk - not people with disability. The Auckland research centre team are also looking into better ways of addressing this with findings being presented at the conference.

Regardless of the best new interventions and the smartest drugs in the world, if people won't use them - they are worth little. Internationally people are saying: they have had enough of 'new' medications so they want to work out ways to help people to believe they are worth taking rather than inventing new drugs, she said.

``The same is true in rehabilitation - if the interventions we are developing do not map onto what people feel is worth buying into, they are arguably a waste of time and money. But 'costs' have to be understood within a long term context.

``Just because a health care intervention or support may cost more upfront if the gain is greater than 'non-intensive' rehabilitation- the benefit is probably really worth considering. Given that ACC pays nearly $6million a day, a small short term increase may be absolutely worth it. But that takes society understanding what it pays for and what it gets, which is not easy.’’

``NZ has a fantastic no fault compensation system in ACC but - people are frequently floored by the reality they experience when they have a medically caused (rather than injury related) disability and get a fraction of what you get in terms of care, rehabilitation, compensation compared to those covered by ACC. Is this what we want for our people? I don't think so.’’

Weekly compensation claims and social rehabilitation for clients with serious injury make up over 60 percent of ACC’s claims liability of $19.6 billion. Claims liability is the amount of money required to fully fund the cost of all claims during their lifetime. Weekly compensation claims amount to a liability of $5.5 billion and social rehabilitation claims for seriously injured clients to a liability of $5.8 billion.

Some of the world’s other leading experts will call on more research funding and offer new treatment ideas at the four-day conference starting in Queenstown on Wednesday. About 250 New Zealand and Australian specialists in rehabilitation will discuss the major issues facing their medical treatment area.

The conference will also include the 17th annual scientific meeting of the Australasian Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine.

ENDS