by Rod Hughes
Costa Rica has long been near the top of the world list for having the most traffic accidents per capita. Today, the daily La Nacion focused on the cost to the National Insurance Institute (INS, the Spanish acronym) that is passed on to the individual policy holder.
Some 60 traffic accident injuries per day cost INS an average of 27 million colones.That is more than $50,000—not a monstrous sum in the United States but a heavy burden on INS, even if it does have a government insurance monopoly. The company runs its own medical care and rehabilitation facility and also contracts with the private hospital La Catolica for surgery and intensive care.
But INS is not the only public heath agency taking a hit from traffic mishaps. Some ambulances take accident victims automatically to a Social Security (Caja) hospital. The Caja attended 21,912 injuries to motorists, cyclists and pedestrians in 2006. INS treated 18,320 last year. But these figures are a trifle misleading, since often a Caja hospital will treat a traffic victim’s hurts, stabilize the patient, then pass the patient to INS for follow up and rehab.
The newspaper focused today on the motorcycle injuries, common here since many drivers disregard the rights of passage of bikes and their all too vulnerable riders. The paper interviewed patients in a ward that seemed to specialize in bike riders. Some were quite eloquent, as were their injuries.
Zaira Mora, 49, was returning home only five kilometers away in Grecia, riding the bike driven by her husband Fernando when a public transit bus swerved out of its lane Aug. 9 and hit them. She suffered a fractured femure and tibia in her left leg. “It should be called a “muertocicleta” she said bitterly, a clever pun in Spanish. (Motocicleta is the word for motorcycle, while the word muerto means dead.) She is looking forward (if the word forward may be used) to six or eight months of recuperation followed by painful rehab.
Red Cross volunteer Victor Benavides was hit by a drunk driver Aug. 14 as he rode on a highway in San Carlos canton. He is waiting his turn for surgery on three fractures of the right leg.
Randy Esquivel, 21, has three leg fractures and is also the victim of a hit-and-run. “(Car) drivers are brutes,” he said, “They don’t measure the dangers, so here I am paying the consequences.”