Impact of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on pediatric injury and mortality in Cape Town, South Africa[1]
Summary
Examination of pediatric emergency visits at Cape Town's three largest public trauma centres and three private hospital groups, plus deaths investigated by the three city mortuaries, across the 31 days of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, compared with equivalent periods from 2007-2009 and with the two weeks before and after the event. Pediatric trauma volume fell significantly during the tournament — approximately 2 per 100,000 (37%) fewer injuries per day — across a majority of injury subtypes, with no change in mortality. Within the event period, all-cause pediatric emergency visits fell 16.4% during the five hours surrounding local match start times, rose 26.2% immediately afterwards, and traumatic injury rose 15.6% in the twelve hours following matches.
So what
This is the best-designed study in the pediatric mass-gathering literature and it contradicts the field's working assumption. A mass gathering did not add pediatric injury burden; it displaced burden in time and net reduced it by more than a third. Any planning model that treats mass gatherings as uniformly additive for children is arguing against the strongest available evidence. The intra-event pattern — a trough during matches, a spike after, and a delayed trauma peak at twelve hours — is also directly schedulable, and is the kind of finding that should shape when pediatric capability is staffed rather than whether it is.
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- Publisher (DOI) ↗may be paywalled
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