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How safe is everyday life in Estonia? Answers might be sought from various sources, but accidental deaths are a solid figure and, as divided into categories, will show the overall mental and physical situation.
Editorial: let’s tackle the accidental deaths
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We may compare Estonia to other countries, or we can compare our own earlier figures with current ones – if we want to know the trend.
Surely, damage from accidents is not limited to the worst – human death. On the average, Europe has a couple of dozen injured persons per death needing in-patient treatment. And well over a hundred such as may be treated at home.
On top of the human tragedy, accidents do have the economic dimension: for hospital treatment of accident victims, Europe spends close to eight percent of its medical budget – stretched as it is (about €80m out of €1tn). Every year, a quarter of a million Europeans die due to accidents, a million ending up with a permanent disability. Therefore, cutting the overall number of accidental deaths is a worthy goal to consider for those who, for some reason, think that for some reason they (being remarkably wise or outstandingly careful) would never end up in the count.
How about Estonia? Comparing with other European nations, with Lithuania, Latvia and Finland (!) we’re at the top of the black list. In Germany, accidental deaths are five times rarer than in Lithuania, three times fewer than in Estonia, and twice less than in Finland.
In Southern Europe, accidental deaths are fewer than towards the North; in Eastern Europe, they tend to be more frequent than in the West. The geometric mean of the two vectors points towards the North-East – and, nothing doing! that’s where we dwell.
Swedes, with the same climate than we do, have accidental death toll twice as low as in Estonia, and 1.5 times less than in Finland. At that, the wealth gap between Finland and Sweden has long ceased to be dramatic. In order to find answers, why don’t we learn from the Swedish solutions and problems unsolved in Finland...