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Almost $40 million has been forked out by ACC for new water-related injuries in the Bay of Plenty in the past seven years.
That's the amount — excluding GST — the Crown entity has paid for 20,282 new claims in the region between July 2015 and the end ofSeptember last year.
The total for the entire country was 191,126 at a cost of $442,294,397. The Auckland region had the most claims with 55,468 and the Waikato region had 24,748.
The most common water-related activity that led to a claim was boating, accounting for a third of the total claims and costs each year, followed by swimming and fishing.
Beach injuries were also common in the Bay of Plenty, with nearly 4000 new ACC claims made between 2018 and September 30 last year.
ACC - the Accident Compensation Corporation - helps prevent injuries but also helps New Zealanders and visitors on the road to recovery after an accident.
Mount Maunganui on December 28, 2016. Photo / Andrew Warner
ACC injury prevention programme leader James Whitaker said research showed most injuries were predictable and could be stopped.
The entity receives around 5000 claims a day across the board. That's about two million claims costing more than $4 billion annually.
"We want people to avoid injury and keep themselves and their whānau safe," Whitaker said.
"We're asking New Zealanders to take a moment, 'Have a hmmm', and think about how others are harmed and affected if we get injured.
"The Have a hmmm injury prevention campaign lays down a wero (challenge) to all New Zealanders to stop and take a moment to assess the risks at home, work, and play."
ACC also runs a number of water safety campaigns designed to prevent injuries around New Zealand's beaches, rivers, lakes, and pools.
These include Water Skills for Life training, which helps 2000 children aged between 5 and 13 learn how to have fun and be safe in the water. It also supports Kia Maanu Kia Ora, a kaupapa Māori water safety programme.
Despite this, there were 3817 beach-related new claims in the Bay of Plenty between the start of 2018 and September 30 last year.
In the Bay of Plenty region during the 2020-21 season, surf life savers responded to 49 major first aid incidents — there were 313 nationwide. A major first aid incident is any incident where a patient is administered some form of advanced medical treatment or needs hospitalisation.
It comes as it's thought easily 10,000 people had been heading to beaches on Tauranga's coast each day over the holiday season, according to Surf Life Saving New Zealand's eastern region manager Chaz Gibbons-Campbell last week.
Mount Maunganui Lifeguard Service chairman Jamie Troughton also said there had been two rescues, 14 assists, and 150 preventive actions in Mount Maunganui on the last weekend of 2021 and the first of 2022.
The Bay of Plenty also had the second-highest lake-related new injury claims in the country.
There were 795 claims over a four-year period, second only to 1295 in Waikato.
New claims are those registered with ACC within the specified period.
A range of different injury types was included in the total, such as jumping, boating, drowning, or water sports.
• Jumping claims that refer to "jump", "dive", "water/dive bomb" or "manu", from a "bridge", "cliff", "waterfall", or "boat";
• Boating claims that contain the keywords "boat", "boating", or "sailing", or has been identified as a boating sports activity;
• Drowning claims that contain the keyword "drown", or the injury description includes "drown" or "submerge";
• Water sport claims that includes one of the following activities: fishing, kayaking, surfing, underwater diving, water-skiing, or swimming.
According to the ACC website, it's funded from multiple sources including businesses, petrol, vehicle registration revenues and wages. Funds from each source are spent on injuries relevant to where they occurred.
For example, if someone was injured in a motor vehicle accident, the claim would be paid for by funds sourced from motorists such as registration and petrol levies. Or if someone fell off a bicycle, the cost of treatment is paid from a levy on a person's wages.
