NZ troops more at risk abroad than at home
The Herald’s headline is “NZ troops more at risk at home than abroad”, but there’s the familiar problem with denominators.
Of more than 3500 injuries recorded between January 2011 and May 2012, 269 were suffered overseas, according to figures released to the Herald under the Official Information Act.
The majority of injuries are in NZ, because that’s where most NZDF staff time is spent. At the moment, 343 NZDF personnel are on operations and UN missions, and 553 on other overseas deployments. That’s from a total of 11891 military personnel and 2455 (equivalent full time) civilian staff (annual report, p13). So, just over 6% of NZDF staff are deployed overseas, and they get 7.7% of the reported injuries. They are at more risk overseas, even if you lump together minor sporting injuries with deaths from enemy action. That’s what you would expect, and it’s what Lt General Rhys Jones is quoted as saying.
Ignoring the denominators misses out the opportunity to comment on the real differences: it’s a bit surprising that being deployed doesn’t increase the injury risk more, but the increase in serious and fatal injuries is probably masked by the noise of miscellaneous exercise-related injury.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Another way of looking at risk is ACC levies. Defence personnel seems to have lower charges than for firefighters, correction services, and gardening and turf management services. Is it riskier to mow lawns for a living than work for the NZDF?
12 years ago