The Relationship between Ramadan and the Number of Accidents or Other Injuries: A Comparative Study of Men and Women Admitted to Emergency Wards of Hospitals in Kermanshah, Iran (2001 to 2008)

Improving community health is the most important concerns of judicial authorities in every society. Previous research has yielded conflicting results in terms of changes in the rates of social harms in Ramadan (in comparison with the rest of the year). Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between Ramadan and the number of accidents or injuries reported by emergency wards of hospitals in Kermanshah, Iran, during a seven year period (2001 through 2008). The study also aimed at examining the possible differences between men and women in this regard.
The current study had a retrospective, quasi-experimental nature. All male and female patients (whose age ranged from 15 to 45 years) who were admitted to emergency departments of Taleghani and Imam Reza hospitals of Kermanshah due to car accident injuries and three other injuries caused by gunshot, fighting, and fall from height during Ramadan and non-Ramadan months of the years 2001 through 2008 were included in our study. Convenient sampling was used for data collection. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, paired samples t-test and ANOVA were exploited for data analysis. In this study, The ethical issues were all considered and the authors declared no conflict of interest.
For both males and females, a large number of accidents were generally recorded in non-Ramadan months compared with Ramadan (0.001). Nonetheless, no statistically significant differences were found between mean scores obtained for Ramadan and non-Ramadan months in either group (0.743 and 0.773 for women and men, respectively). On the other hand, the mean values of men’s injuries were higher than those of women’s in all cases (0.05 α≤).
The results of this study showed that, on average, the number of accidents and other injuries in non-Ramadan months is greater than that of Ramadan (though the difference is not statistically considerable). Furthermore, the number of injuries in women during Ramadan and other months of the studied years were lower than that of men.