Healthy ageing: More older people are dying from accidents, despite a reduction in the general death rate from such incidents, a healthy ageing conference has been told.
Dr Declan Bedford, public health specialist in the North Eastern Health Board, said that just under 1,000 women over 65 years of age died from unintentional injuries in 1997, compared with almost 1,200 five years later.
Similarly, the corresponding death rate for men had risen from just over 800 a year in 1997 to almost 1,100 five years later. Falls account for most of these injuries.
Meanwhile, the general population saw a small decline in its death rate from such injuries.
Dr Bedford said this was worrying, as the 1998 health promotion strategy for older people had a target of reducing such injuries by 17 per cent.
Older people were living longer now, and trips and falls had more serious implications in older age, he said. Research had shown that 40 per cent of people who fractured a hip died within a year, "so this has huge consequences".
Dr Bedford was speaking at the National Council on Ageing and Older People's annual conference in Tullamore.
He said the number of deaths from falls had increased dramatically in recent years and they now accounted for almost two- thirds of older people's injuries seen in acute hospitals.
In 1997, just over 400 women a year died from falls but that number had increased to almost 700 in 2002. Similarly, the elderly male death rate from falls almost doubled over that time.
More women were likely to be injured because they lived longer than men, but fatal accidents were twice more likely in men. Dr Bedford attributed this to a male tendency to take more risks, even in old age.
From the age of 70 onwards, the likelihood of dying from an accident increased steeply, he said. This had a knock-on effect as older people's unintentional injuries accounted for more than 4 per cent of all bed days in acute hospitals.
Some 45 per cent of all people killed in domestic fires were over 65, he said. However, the rate of elderly deaths from fires and car crashes was falling.
Dr Bedford called for a co-ordinated strategy to deal with the high level of elderly deaths from such injuries. Such a strategy would have to look at health and fitness, environmental hazards, fire prevention and road safety, he said.
A Canadian expert on accident prevention told the conference it was pointless to tell people "not to do this or that" because people liked to take risks.
Dr Robert Conn, chief executive of the Smartrisk injury prevention group, said people had to be encouraged to take "smart" risks. A person riding a bike without a helmet was taking a risk, while a person with a helmet was taking a smart risk, he said. Positive messages would give people the power of choice so they could choose to avoid an injury.
