A day in the life of a lifeguard. Made with funding from NZ On Air.
Close to $40 million has been forked out by ACC for new water-related injuries in the Bay of Plenty over the past seven years.
That's the amount - excluding GST - the Crown entity has paid out for 20,282 new claims in the region between July 2015 and the endof September 2021.
The total for the entire country was 191,126 and the cost of those new claims was $442,294,397. The Auckland region had the most claims with a towering 55,468 and the neighbouring Waikato region had 24,748.
The most common water-related activity that led to a claim was boating, accounting for a third of the claims and costs each year, followed by swimming and fishing.
Lake injuries were also common in the Bay of Plenty, with just shy of 800 claims over a four year period between 2018 and September 2021.
ACC - the Accident Compensation Corporation - helps prevent injuries but also helps New Zealanders and visitors on the road to recovery after an accident.
Lake Rotorua. Photo / Andrew Warner
ACC injury prevention programme leader James Whitaker says research shows most injuries aren't random but are predictable and can be stopped.
The entity receives around 5000 claims a day across the board. That's about two million claims each year and costs more than $4 billion annually.
"We want people to avoid injury and keep themselves and their whānau safe," Whitaker said.
"We're asking New Zealanders to take a moment, 'Have a hmmm', and think about how others are harmed and affected if we get injured.
"The "Have a hmmm" injury prevention campaign lays down a wero (challenge) to all New Zealanders to stop and take a moment to assess the risks at home, work, and play."
ACC also runs a number of water safety campaigns designed to prevent injuries around New Zealand's beaches, rivers, lakes, and pools.
These include Water Skills for Life training, which helps 2000 children aged between 5 and 13 learn how to have fun and be safe in the water. It also supports Kia Maanu Kia Ora, a kaupapa Māori water safety programme for Māori run by Māori.
Despite this, the Bay of Plenty had the second-highest lake-related new injury claims between the start of 2018 and September 30, 2021, in the country.
There were 795 claims over the four year period, meanwhile, there were 1295 in Waikato.
There were also 3817 beach-related new claims in the Bay of Plenty over the same timeframe.
Surf Life Saving New Zealand's three most common types of activity at the time of injury over the past decade were swimming/wading, surfing and others.
New claims are those that were registered with ACC within the specified period.
A range of different injury types was included in the total, such as jumping, boating, drowning, or water sports.
• Jumping claims that refer to "jump", "dive", "water/dive bomb" or "manu", from a "bridge", "cliff", "waterfall", or "boat";
• Boating claims that contain the keywords "boat", "boating", or "sailing", or has been identified as a boating sports activity;
• Drowning claims that contain the keyword "drown", or the injury description includes "drown" or "submerge";
• Water sport claims that includes one of the following activities: fishing, kayaking, surfing, underwater diving, water-skiing, or swimming.
According to the ACC website, it's funded from multiple sources including businesses, petrol, vehicle registration revenues and wages. Funds from each source are spent on injuries relevant to where they occurred.
For example, if someone was injured in a motor vehicle accident, the claim would be paid for by funds sourced from motorists such as registration and petrol levies. Or if someone fell off a bicycle, the cost of treatment is paid from a levy on a person's wages.
Meanwhile, in the Bay of Plenty over the 2020-21 season, surf life savers responded to 49 major first aid incidents — there were 313 nationwide. A major first aid incident is any incident where a patient is administered some form of advanced medical treatment or requires hospitalisation.
Water Safe NZ reported fatal drownings this summer holiday period were up 180 per cent, with 14 preventable drowning deaths nationwide between Christmas Eve and January 5.
Among them was a 5-year-old who died after a water-related incident at Mangamate Waterfall near Minginui last week, and a man, believed to be in his 50s, died after a water-related incident on January 6.
