Southern DHB gets behind NZ Safety Week

26 November 2014

Southern DHB gets behind NZ Safety Week

This week (24-30 November) is Safety Week. The main areas of focus are alcohol and sport and recreation activities focusing on keeping people safe over the summer period, and highlighting the change in the blood alcohol limit for driving from 1 December.

Southern DHB Occupational Health team have been encouraging health and safety representatives to participate and involve their teams by providing ACC Health Promotion/Injury Prevention resources to raise awareness of health and safety and spread the messages about this year’s campaign.

Ward 9b at Dunedin Hospital is holding a humorous team-building competition on the ward with staff invited to design Personal Protective Equipment and Māori Liaison is holding a health and safety quiz. Public Health South also has an information display in their reception area.

“We’re making this a fun event to raise awareness across the DHB but it does have serious messages,” says Southern DHB Occupational Health and Safety Manager (Otago), Stephanie Pomfret.

“Summer injuries can be some of the most frustrating and they’re often avoidable. It’s important to make these holidays as safe as possible, because we’ve all experienced the pain, frustration and inconvenience of injuries that could have easily been avoided by taking a few precautionary steps.”

“Injuries that occur outside work impact on peoples home and work life causing pain, often lengthy rehabilitation and difficulty getting to work. It can also be really frustrating and isolating not being able to do your job,” said Mrs Pomfret.

“We want to help all our staff, their families and the public to have a healthy summer.”

Visit www.safetyweek.co.nz for more helpful information.

Interesting facts and statistics

Sport & Recreation
• 90,000 people will be injured during sport and recreation activity this summer
• Last year ACC received almost 450,000 claims for sport and recreation injuries
• Rugby Union accounted for more than 14 percent of these injuries
• The cost of all of these injuries was around $405,800,000 for treatment, rehab and
• weekly compensation
• 410 people were injured riding a luge last year
• The most common injuries were tears and lacerations and sprains and strains
• 27 percent of sport and recreation injuries happen on a Saturday. Over 40 percent
• happen in the weekend.

Alcohol
• 56,000 people will be hurt as a result of drinking alcohol this summer
• In one year New Zealanders drink 34 million litres of pure alcohol – that’s 9.7 litres for every person aged 15 and over. Many people drink much more than this
• New Zealanders spend $85 million per week on alcohol
• Estimates indicate between 600 and 1000 people die each year from alcohol-related causes.

Something quirky!
• Last year there were 120 haka related injuries
• Over 5,000 injuries happened when people were going to or from the toilet
• 23 people were injured with a plastic cricket bat!
• 9 people were injured by a radio-controlled helicopter last year
• 200 mentioned the involvement of a Grandmother in their injuries last year
• 86 people were injured by a frisbee
• Last year 40 people were injured taking part in ‘super-hero’ activity!

ENDS

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