Medical Errors in Greece: An Economic Analysis of Compensations Awarded by Civil Courts (2000-2009)

Medical errors are reported with increased frequency both in Europe and in the United States of America and measures are put in place to deal with the problem. In Greece, more and more patients think that it is likely to experience a medical error during health care delivery and the organizations they can turn to if this happens are hardly enough and with meagre response. The consequences of medical errors are multiple and complex with significant financial implications. Nowadays there is an urgent need to resolve problems that refer to cost containment in the Greek Health System. Some research findings from the review of 128 compensations awarded by civil courts for the years 2000 to 2009 for medical errors in Greece are quite interesting. The mean compensation amounted to €292,613 representing 35.41% of claimed compensation. Only a small proportion of medical errors gain publicity as the majority of claims get settled out of court, covered by the insurance policy or the hospitals. The burden of the obvious and hidden cost affects not only the patient, his family and the hospital but also the whole of the society. This comes from our estimation that the level of compensation awarded by the civil courts for medical errors is remarkable high. Unfortunately only some estimates of the cost are possible due to the lack of statistical data. The creation of an independent oversight body for the review of medical errors and complaints nationwide as well as the modernization of the hospitals’ monitoring systems is necessary in order to handle the medical error phenomenon. Above all, cooperation and trust between patients, health care professionals, hospital managers, medical boards and the government are essential to get to the root of the problem.

Concentrations and Allocation of NO₂Emissions to Different Sources in a Distinctive Italian Region after the COVID-19 Lockdown

Nitrogen dioxide concentrations, being short-lived pollutants, are good indicators of changes in emission sources and economic slowdowns. This analysis focuses on the Greater Salento region (Italy) and aims to monitor, by investigating the relative sources, the changes of NO2 tropospheric concentrations notoriously related to vehicular traffic exhausts and, in general, to fossil fuel combustion processes which are now apparently linked to many COVID-19 patients deaths. The principle objective of this paper is to map the tropospheric NO2 local distribution and to extrapolate, from the overall data of average daily concentrations of NO2 as recorded by the ARPA-Puglia ground-based monitoring stations, the single contributions and their mutual relationships of the different diffuse emission sources (motor vehicles and domestic heating systems) by identifying, the environmental background threshold of this pollutant of each geographic area, thanks to the simplified situation determined by the COVID-19 lockdown. The analyzed territory (the so-called “Greater Salento” or Salento Peninsula) is very unusual because there are two provinces with large industrial settlements, Taranto, with the steel area of ex-ILVA, and Brindisi, with petrochemical and thermoelectric power plants, which enclose a territory, the province of Lecce, free of any industrial plants of such sizes and their environmental impacts. From the results of this study, in addition to confirming the obvious and overall decrease of NO2 concentrations (-23.2% compared to previous year) during the lockdown period, interesting and distinctive local allocations of nitrogen dioxide concentrations to different sources have also emerged: heating household systems, and not road traffic, are the main sources of this dangerous pollutant in this region, with an average quota of 44.3%. The studied regional situation is so significant as to allow broader considerations regarding to other similar international areas.

Pesticides: An Overview of the Current Health Problems of Their Use

The necessity to produce increasing quantities of food to meet the demand of ever-increasing populations has led to the massive use of pesticides in agriculture. Their massive consumption derives from the need to subtract food from competition of fungi, bacteria, and insects and agricultural land from the invasion of competing weeds. Modern agriculture floats on an ocean of synthetic chemical compounds used to crop protection and food preservation during storage. Presently, worldwide about 2000 active ingredients have been listed, categorized into about 60 classes of chemicals. In the world, the overall pesticides, used in agriculture, are about 4.1 million tonnes/years. The exposure of animals and humans to pesticides could be related to neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, liver and kidney damage, cancer, reproductive effects (sperm abnormalities, decreased fertility, fetal growth retardation, birth defects, or spontaneous abortion), and growth modifications. However, the knowledge about their potential damage to the organs of reproduction, breastfeeding, and infants is still largely insufficient. It is necessary to improve new methods to identify and regulate the long-term safety of pesticides use, to protect the environment and health, and to eliminate the adverse effect of pesticides on the environment and non-target organisms. The assessment of possible risks of old and new pesticides must be increased to include the possible effects on reproduction on animals and pregnancy loss even after a long time. In the meantime, it is necessary to minimize the use of synthetic chemical compounds by increasing the use of biological systems.