New Year’s Eve celebration turned into pain

MANILA (NYTIMES): Celebration with careless attitude resulted in regression. Officials in the Philippines mounted one of the most extensive campaigns in the country’s history to stem the annual tide of injuries caused by New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Grisly posters of mangled hands were displayed. Doctors appeared on television news programs showing the bone saws they would use to amputate fingers blown apart by fireworks. Police officers were threatened with jail if they fired their guns in celebration. One senior health official even took to a stage in a flamboyant dance to show an alternative way to celebrate the new year.

President Benigno S. Aquino III chimed in, pleading in his annual New Year’s message for people to observe the new year with “horns and loud music” instead of fireworks and guns.

But when the smoke cleared on Sunday morning, few officials were celebrating. The Philippines Department of Health estimated that 476 people suffered injuries during the celebrations, including 454 related to fireworks, 18 to celebratory gunfire and 4 to the ingestion of firecrackers.

The casualties included 177 children younger than 11 and 26 people who required amputations, Health Department officials said.

The total represented a 13 percent decline from the total in the previous year and less than the average of 536 injuries.

Despite the decrease, however, workers in Manila emergency rooms did not appear impressed.

“In my experience, it was worse this year than last year,” said Dr. Janice Sahagun, a surgeon at the Chinese General Hospital and Medical Center in Manila.

Dr. Sahagun described the scene at the hospital as similar to the situation at a medical facility in a war zone, with all staff surgeons on duty, treating patients with severe burns and fingers damaged by fireworks. A number of patients had been in traffic accidents, including some caused by a lack of visibility because of smoke from fireworks. Others had been stabbed or beaten in fights related to the revelry.

The annual Philippine custom of bringing in the new year with high-volume celebrations is rooted in the Chinese tradition of driving away bad luck with noise, but here it has come to involve chaos, violence and high-powered explosives.