Royal Inland Hospital not seeing more heat related injuries than usual to their emergency department.
Head of RIH Emergency Department, Dr. Henk Van Zyl says obviously it is very hot outside, and they do still end up treating minor ailments like sun burns, or dehydration, however…
“The thing that really causes the big impact in the summer for us is still the old enemies, like alcohol and accidents related to intoxication or drugs, things like that.”
Dr. Van Zyl says they’ve seen a lot more high impact trauma injuries this year compared to last year.
He says these injuries are often from dirt biking, mountain biking, ATV-ing, and boating
“It might also be related to the fact that we had the fires last year. Which maybe meant a lot of people didn’t come to our area, a lot of people didn’t go to the beach, and a lot of people didn’t go out mountain biking or dirt biking.”
He adds, if you are headed out for summer activities, take care to ensure these kind of injuries don’t happen.