Drunkenness Tops Songkran Accident List

[george]

Drunkenness tops Songkran accident list in Ubon Ratchathani

BANGKOK: -- More people were injured from drunken brawls than from road accidents in the north-eastern province of Ubon Ratchathani during the Songkran period, the director of a local hospital revealed today.

Dr. Kawee Chaisiri said that from 8-15 April, 786 people were admitted with injuries to Sapsathiprasong Hospital, four times the normal rate.

What was notable, he said, was that 56 of those injured had been hurt in drunken brawls, compared to 44 percent who had been injured in road accidents.

Warning that drunkenness caused huge social problems, he said that the often violent nature of people who were drunk meant that the hospital had been forced to tighten security arrangements for its emergency room.

In order to cope with the Songkran accident rate, the hospital has set up a ‘war room’ to solve the shortage of beds on a daily basis.

Over the past few days the hospital has been admitting around 40 patients each day to the ICU, which has only 160 beds. Meanwhile the huge number of x-rays being performed caused one of the hospital’s x-ray machines to malfunction, and it was forced to borrow one from the private sector.

But the heaviest workload has fallen to surgeons, who have been performing an average of nearly 20 operations a day. This number surged to as high as 43 on 15 April.

“Rates of surgery are 3-4 times their normal level, and we have had to open 4-5 operating theatres”, Dr. Kawee admitted.

Doctors and nurses have been doing average shifts of 16 hours, with many sleeping over at the hospital rather than going home.

--TNA 2005-04-17

[Oleg_Rus]

maybe it's offtopic but I on first day of Songran I've seen so many drunk teens early in the morning (~6am) .

for the rest of the festival - there were drunken girls throwing water straight to motorcycle drivers like they wanted to hit them down.

young kids with machine size water throwers, barely walking ppl on the sois..

lucky we stayed at home, looked pretty wierd, though...

[Pattaya_Fox]

Drunkenness tops Songkran accident list in Ubon Ratchathani 

BANGKOK: -- More people were injured from drunken brawls than from road accidents in the north-eastern province of Ubon Ratchathani during the Songkran period, the director of a local hospital revealed today.

Dr. Kawee Chaisiri said that from 8-15 April, 786 people were admitted with injuries to Sapsathiprasong Hospital, four times the normal rate.

What was notable, he said, was that 56 of those injured had been hurt in drunken brawls, compared to 44 percent who had been injured in road accidents.

Warning that drunkenness caused huge social problems, he said that the often violent nature of people who were drunk meant that the hospital had been forced to tighten security arrangements for its emergency room.

In order to cope with the Songkran accident rate, the hospital has set up a ‘war room’ to solve the shortage of beds on a daily basis.

Over the past few days the hospital has been admitting around 40 patients each day to the ICU, which has only 160 beds. Meanwhile the huge number of x-rays being performed caused one of the hospital’s x-ray machines to malfunction, and it was forced to borrow one from the private sector.

But the heaviest workload has fallen to surgeons, who have been performing an average of nearly 20 operations a day. This number surged to as high as 43 on 15 April.

“Rates of surgery are 3-4 times their normal level, and we have had to open 4-5 operating theatres”, Dr. Kawee admitted.

Doctors and nurses have been doing average shifts of 16 hours, with many sleeping over at the hospital rather than going home.

--TNA 2005-04-17

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The `downfalls` of such a wet happy occasion