Argentina’s Health Ministry has published a new report revealing that there was a total of 31,847 suicides nationwide in the decade between 2010 and 2019.
The figure, provided by the Health Ministry’s DEIS (Dirección de Estadísticas e Información en Salud) statistical information office, translates into 3,185 deaths a year, with a daily toll of eight or one every three hours, the portfolio revealed.
Argentina’s “suicide mortality rate for 2019 was 7.3 per 100,000 people, similar to previous years. In 2018 it was 7.5 per 100,000 people; in 2017, it was 7.2 per 100,000 population; and in 2016 it was 7.1 per 100,000 people,” said the Health Ministry.
“Furthermore, suicide is the fourth-leading cause of death in the 15 to 29 age-group,” adds the report.
In the framework of the strategy being implemented by the Ministry headed by Carla Vizzotti in different provinces, figures on this public health problem are being divulged as part of the support material for vigilance against this scourge.
Officials have proposed a number of recommendations and strategies to lower the grim figure. Argentina's government is working on a "unified information system" that will log suicides and suicide attempts, an initiative stemming from the 2020 Ley Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio (“National Suicide Prevention Law”).
Authorities have also invested in “biopsychosocial care, scientific and epidemiological research, professional training in the detection and care of people at risk of suicide and assistance to families of suicide victims,” the Ministry said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been calling on governments worldwide to do more to tackle the problem for years, though the body says the pandemic has aggravated the issue even further.
According to the WHO, “suicide represents a growing public health problem and a priority both at global and regional level,” defining it as a complex and multicausal phenomenon where biological, social, cultural, psychological and environmental factors interact.
They also explain that one out of every 100 deaths worldwide stems from the decision to end one’s own life, adding that over 700,000 people committed suicide according to 2021 data.
– Times/Perfil
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