New Survey Charts High Costs of Treating Young Gunfire Victims

It costs more than $14,000 to treat each child struck down by gunfire--or enough to pay for a full year at a private college--according to a survey of children’s hospitals.

“This is a critical issue for kids. It’s one of the leading causes for children losing their lives today,” said Lawrence A. McAndrews, president of the National Assn. of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions.

Some 5,356 people under the age of 19 were killed by guns in 1991, or almost 15 youths a day, according to government statistics. Thousands more are wounded by firearms.

The hospital association examined discharge records from 44 acute-care children’s hospitals and found, in a survey released Thursday, that children wounded by gunfire ran up bills that averaged $14,434 in 1991.

That is about what four-year private colleges charged for tuition, room and board that year.

The association counted only the hospital charges, not doctor bills or the costs of lifetime rehabilitation for the maimed.

Some gunshot victims required hundreds of thousands of dollars of care; others were released after being stitched up in the emergency room.

“We’d a lot rather see that money spent on educating these kids than treating them for gunshot wounds,” said McAndrews, former chief executive of Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

When polio killed 3,152 adults and children in 1952, it sparked a global effort to combat that epidemic, he noted.

“Here in our own back yard, we’re losing over 5,000 kids a year and people just shrug it off,” he said.

A separate study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 59% of the youths killed by guns in 1990 were victims of homicide, 30% suicides and 11% unintentional shootings.

“Gunshot wounds are the fifth-leading cause of accidental death for children under the age of 14, and they are the leading cause of death for black teen-age boys,” McAndrews said.

Part of the answer, he said, is gun control and other measures to keep guns out of the hands of children, including parents keeping weapons under lock and key.