Half Attica sidewalks unsafe
At least half of the sidewalks in Attica are obstructed or damaged in some way and contribute to pedestrian injuries, especially among the elderly, according to the results of a study released yesterday. Research by the Athens University Medical School found that 64 percent of sidewalks have cars parked on them, 52 percent are missing paving slabs and 47 percent have uneven paving. Some 320 sidewalks were examined as part of the survey, which also found that 31 percent have metal or cement posts that are meant to prevent cars from parking but often end up hampering pedestrians. Falling on badly paved or obstructed sidewalks is the third most common reason that elderly Greeks are taken to the hospital, the head of the Health Ministry’s road safety committee, Yiannis Papadopoulos, said yesterday. More than 430 people were admitted to Athens’s Erythros Stavros Hospital in 2004 after tripping on broken sidewalks and suffering injuries – half of the patients were elderly. In the same year, some 350 people were treated at a hospital in Patras for injuries sustained after falling on sidewalks. Papadopoulos said that in many cases the injuries suffered as a result of these falls are very serious. Research shows that 40 percent of people who are treated for more than seven days in an intensive-care unit after sidewalk accidents suffer from hospital infections. On leaving intensive care, one in 10 people need a wheelchair and 30 percent need to be under constant supervision. The infrastructure to rehabilitate those injured is also severely lacking, Papadopoulos said. One in three patients is not informed that he or she could undergo a rehabilitation program. Out of 106 hospitals surveyed, only 28 were found to have physiotherapists. The road safety committee also pointed to the absence of an effective system to immediately diagnose injuries when people are admitted to hospitals, which, experts said, often leads to patients suffering unnecessarily.
