True cost of "Charity Parachuting"?

[PhreeZone 20]

I found this little blurb as I was surfing the web and though it was odd. I know that "charity parachuting" seems to be more of a British thing but thes figures jumped out at me as being tilted towards the dangerous side of things and almost nothing raised for the charity. Is it really like this or are these numbers way off?


Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of £3751 per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of £5781 per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was £30. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS £13.75 in return.

Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[cpoxon 0]

Eric, can you provide a reference to your source? What was the scope of the study (duration and when)?

If I get a chance I may do more research (the BPA's medical advisor Dr. John Carter regularly monitors and publicises information such as this) but these numbers seem off. Overweight females doing static-line round parachute jumps are statistically most likely to suffer and injury but round jumping is practically non-existant these days.

The way most (official) charity jumping works in the UK is that the jumper has to typically raise double the cost of the jump (approximately £200) to cover the cost and raise a decent amount for the charity to make it worthwhile so I don't know where the £30 figure comes from, and if that figure is wrong, can the others be trusted?

But you know what they say about statistics!

Reminds me of the attached "advert" that was once published in Viz (a UK puerile adult comic)...

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[shropshire 0]

P.S - VIZ is ace

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[MakeItHappen 15]

Quote

I found this little blurb as I was surfing the web and though it was odd. I know that "charity parachuting" seems to be more of a British thing but thes figures jumped out at me as being tilted towards the dangerous side of things and almost nothing raised for the charity. Is it really like this or are these numbers way off?


Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of £3751 per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of £5781 per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was £30. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS £13.75 in return.

Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.

Where did you get this blurb?

From those numbers you can infer that they are using a population of 1582 of charity jumpers. { 174/0.11 } That has to span several years, maybe decades.

110 of those represent the 'serious injury rate' { 63% (174) } and { 110/1582 }

That seems way too high.

Charity jumpers are tandems, AFF or SL. That injury rate seems way off base. Then, of course, charity jumpers may be people who really shouldn't be jumping and are allowed to because "it's for a good cause".

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Google found me this reference


Injury. 1999 May;30(4):283-7. Related Articles, Links

Parachuting for charity: is it worth the money? A 5-year audit of parachute injuries in Tayside and the cost to the NHS.

Lee CT, Williams P, Hadden WA.

Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perth Royal Infirmary, Scotland, UK.

All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.

PMID: 10476298 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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With this aditional info, I now ask if that 94% of so called 'first-time charity parachutists' were what we'd called first time charity parachutists or some whuffo version of that definition? In my original reply I assumed that the 174 were all charity parachutists, not the general jumper population. So that will change numbers too.

{174 * (.94) / .11 } = 1487

{ (63%) 164 } = 103
{103/1487 } = 7%

What I think has happened is that the people doing this research have some how attributed people to doing 'charity' jumps when in fact they had nothing to do with a charity jump.

The injury rate needs to be compared to total number of jumps, not a contrived population that some whuffoes have created in their lab.

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Make It Happen
Parachute History
DiveMaker

[PhreeZone 20]

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T78-3Y8WK2S-1M&_coverDate=05/31/1999&_alid=392341591&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5052&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=5a0b3e917ed37a5b5971fd5fa0e21315


Parachuting for charity: is it worth the money? A 5-year audit of parachute injuries in Tayside and the cost to the NHS

C. T. Lee, 1, P. Williams2 and W. A. Hadden

Department of Orthopaedic surgery, Perth Royal Infirmary, Perth, Scotland, UK

Accepted 11 December 1998. Available online 7 January 2000.




Abstract
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed.

Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of £3751 per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of £5781 per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was £30. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS £13.75 in return.

Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.


1 Present address. Barnet General Hospital, Wellhouse Lane, Barnet, Hertfordshire, UK.

2 Present address. Law Hospital, Carluke, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK.

Corresponding author. 1 Earl Close, Friern Barnet, London N11 3PY, UK. Tel.: +44-181-368-4761

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[cpoxon 0]

From BPA Statistics 2000-2004

Injury rate per 1000 jumps

Year            2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

--------------------------------------------

Experienced     0.3  0.3  0.3  0.3  0.4


1st jump round  17.7 16.8 12.8 16.2 17.1

1st jump square 6.8  5.0  6.9  5.9  4.9  

1st jump AFF    --   --   --   7.0  4.9

1st jump tandem 1.8  1.1  1.4  1.3  1.6

All 1st jumps   5.1  3.0  3.5  2.9  2.7 

These days, most charity jumps are tandem. I would say hardly anyone does 1 AFF level for charity. You can see SL round jumps fell 90% between 2000/2004, SL square dropped 40% and tandem )with the lowest rate of injury to the student) increased 25%.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[cpoxon 0]

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Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Perth Royal Infirmary, Scotland, UK.

Perth is 16 miles from one of the only centres (of 2?) in the country still doing round S/L jumps.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[jumpingjimmy 0]

my mate did a tandem on february the 12th at langar and really hurt his leg on landing he put his feet down when told not to, had to get the ambulance out to him

idiot, LOL

[PhreeZone 20]

Could that also explain why the ammount of money raised was so little? Less money needed to do the jump means less money for the charity needed to be collected?

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[jumpingjimmy 0]

http://www.skylineparachuting.co.uk/pages/charity.htm

rip off or what !!!

mind you, the price of doing a tandem in the UK is a scandle anyway .... i mean come on !!! £230 for a tandem, when the T. I gets minimum wage midweek, or about £50 when he works for himself at the weekends

DZ owners should have Dick Turpin masks on, the robbing bastards

[cpoxon 0]

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Could that also explain why the ammount of money raised was so little? Less money needed to do the jump means less money for the charity needed to be collected?

Maybe. At the centre I was refering to, a SL round jump is approximately half the price of a tandem (£110 vs. £210) with a SL square jump halfway between the two, but I would still expect a charity jumper to raise approximately twice the cost of the jump as a minimum.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[LittleDJ 0]

most so called 'free' charity jumps require you to raise double, half paying for the jump, i did my first jump for charity and survived to take it up as a hobbie! but i suppose it does bring up the round-v- raps argument

***********************************
LittleDJ!!- There is no such thing as a perfectly good aircraft!!!

[jumpingjimmy 0]

http://www.tv-timewarp.co.uk/dick_turpin/Annual_1979.jpg

[MakeItHappen 15]

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Maybe. At the centre I was refering to, a SL round jump is approximately half the price of a tandem (£110 vs. £210) with a SL square jump halfway between the two, but I would still expect a charity jumper to raise approximately twice the cost of the jump as a minimum.

You would *think* that the person would raise that much. I suspect that someone that raises, just over the actual cost of said jump will be allowed to jump for 'free'. It goes with the "that's more than they (the charity) would have anyway". The 'average' raised becomes lower, but it's 'for a good cause'.

That link to skylineparachuting.co.uk is interesting. That domain was registered in 2000, but the business could have existed before that. The report/study was done by 1998.

Interesting marketing concept. It has been adopted in the US in several forms by several charities and organizations. It always pays to research where your donation monies are actually going. It's not that hard (for US charities) - go to Guidestar.org. A caveat is that going thru third parties may 'hide' the actual amounts (percentages) that go to said charity. ThinkBeforeYouPink.org has a good explanation on this for all the pink ribbon campaigns.

I'm trying to get the full article.

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Make It Happen
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DiveMaker

[bob.dino 1]

Quote

DZ owners should have Dick Turpin masks on, the robbing bastards

Do us a favour. Go off, read up on the economics of operating a DZ, then come back and say that.

The only reason most DZs can operate turbine aircraft is by using the cash-flow from tandems to pay for them.

Oh, and how many jumps do you really have?

[bigway 4]

You might want to be careful posting alleged tandem incidents about the dropzone you jump at mate.
Dz owners don't take too friendly to that here in the UK.
It is a small community, skydiving, dont go posting alleged tandem incidents about the dropzone you jump at unless you are authorised to or if you are at a level where you know what you are commenting on if you want to keep a friendly atmosphere with the owners who put their lives in to their dropzone to give you the pleasure to jump. DZO's work a lot harder than you could probably ever imagine unless you were close to them. A dropzone is probably one of the hardest businesses to manage and run. You have more over heads than just owning a plane and having a pilot, you have a major safety factor and regulations to meet and have many peoples lives in your hands owning a dropzone. The people that own these dropzones to me are the greatest people i have ever met. They are doing it for us just as much as the tandems. If it was not for tandems we would not have sport skydiving with turbine aircrafts and facilities that we do. You say things about tandem incidents and put future tandems from going to a particular dropzone, what you are doing is taking a club away from the sport skydivers. Dropzones need tandems to keep us jumping out of these great planes. If you think tandem masters, riggers, CSO's get paid what they are worth you have got to be kidding me. A dropzone in the UK is very fair to charge £230, Hinton is £250 and they can do 100 tandems every sat and sun. Because of that we now have a PAC, and the owners are very much respected there for giving the jumpers what they want when they want it.

.Karnage Krew Gear Store
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[mr2mk1g 10]

I don't buy the figures either.

2 parachute centers in Scotland apparently contributed the patients to this study of the course of 5 years.

174 injuries from only two centers in 5 years? ...seems a little high to me... but ok, I don't have personal knowledge of the true figures.

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The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11%

How does the study come by this figure? How in the world do they possibly know the total number of charity skydives done at the two DZ's in question over the 5 years? They study needs to know that before they can determine overall frequency and I doubt the DZ or BPA will tell them.

According to the figures in the study more than 1 in 10 charity jumpers are apparently injured seriously enough to warrant a hospital attendance. That's about 1 every other load!! And about 3.4% of all charity jumpers are injured so badly they require hospital admission (69% of those injured). So this study would have us believe that on a busy weekend (with an arbitary example of 100 tandems done) an ambulance turns up 11 times every weekend to cart people off to hospital and 3-4 jumpers every weekend are so seriously injured they're admitted to hospital??? Every good weekend??? And that's charity only - before we even count the odd idiot hooking in???

This guy's off his rocker!

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The amount raised per person for charity was £30.

Now I gotta call bullshit on this one too. They are generally required to raise double. I know Jan above suggests that the average perhaps goes down as people who raise less than required are allowed to jump - but that's not been my experience of how the system works. As far as I was aware, if you don't raise the required figure (being roughly double the cost of the jump) you don't get to jump.

If it's actually otherwise and people can hit people up for sponsorship on their charity jump and get a freebie as soon as they've paid for the jump itself then maybe there needs to be a little bit more interest from the police as there would appear on the face of it to be a rather serious issue of fraud going on.