Driving News: The number of patients arriving at the UC San Diego Medical Center Trauma Wing has more than increased fivefold since 2019 – when the height of the boundary wall rose to 30 feet along much of the California border, – compared with the period before, discovered by UC San Diego doctors.
Deaths from falls increased from zero before 2019 to 16 after, according to the research letter published in the medical journal JAMA Surgery. There were 67 imports from the border wall between 2016 and 2018, compared to 375 between 2019 and 2021. “Most of these patients had significant brain and facial injuries or complex fractures of the limbs or spine, with many requiring intensive care and gradual surgical reconstruction,” the doctors wrote. Most of the patients had no health insurance and were not eligible for rehabilitation or physical therapy programs, “further extending the length of hospital stay,” the doctors wrote.
The big picture: Former President Trump promised when he took office to build a wall along the southern border.
His effort resulted in new dams 30 feet high, with miles of double-layer steel fencing. The administration has built bigger barriers in the San Diego area than anywhere else along the border, the Washington Post reports. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say they do not take into account the deaths and injuries resulting from such falls, the Post notes.
What they say: “When you go over 20 feet and up to 30 feet, you are more likely to be seriously injured and die,” Jay Doucet, head of trauma at UC San Diego Health, told the Post.
“We see injuries we have never seen before: pelvic fractures, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries and many open fractures when the bone passes through the skin.”
