Information from the emergency departments of Irish hospitals should be used to create a better understanding of changes in drug use and the increase in violence and crime in the wider community, according to a Cork A&E consultant.
Dr Chris Luke, a consultant at the emergency department at Cork University Hospital, points out that the Republic's A&E departments see 1.2 million people every year - a third of the population.
"We need to take advantage of the emergency department as a resource for the study in real time of medical epidemiology, to create a profile of what is going on in our communities.
"Take cocaine, for example, we had flagged it as a problem five years before it hit the media headlines in Ireland and similarly MRSA," he said.
Dr Luke will speak on the topic An inconvenient truth? The emergency department as environmental health observatoryat the New Horizons in Environmental Health conference which opens in Galway tomorrow, March 28th.
Dr Luke became involved in "nightclub" medicine while in Liverpool. This involved dealing with issues such as violence and sexual health. It also involved injuries due to environmental dangers such as poorly lit stairs, dry ice, smoking and broken glass.
He has been involved in a similar initiative in Cork called Club Cork, where a team of health professionals, drug workers and the Garda provide training to staff of licensed premises in the city.
"We point out the lessons learned from other clubs in other cities, such as the impact of serving drink to somebody who is already drunk and the medical mishaps and violence that can result.
"We have managed to considerably contain the level of violence in Cork city as a result," said Dr Luke.
The deputy chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Alan Reilly, will address the conference on Emerging food safety risks - future challenges. He will be highlighting the link between outbreaks of food-borne illness and fresh ready-to-eat food products.
"Fresh produce is always associated with healthy eating and we are advised to eat five portions of fruit and veg each day, but some of the ready-to-eat fresh produce coming onto the market is now emerging as a vector of food-borne illness," he said.
Mr Reilly said there had been an increase of cases of Crystosporidiumcontamination in Ireland in recent years and that two weeks after the current outbreak in Galway, the source of the contaminant was still not known.
"It's all down to the management of both the treatment and disposal of human and animal waste. It really is unforgivable to be contaminating our water supply with such harmful bugs as Crystosporidium," he said.
Mr Reilly highlighted the need for a reference lab in Ireland to identify specific types of the bug rapidly and put the necessary control and prevention measures in place.
Conference organiser Maurice Mulcahy, principal environmental health officer, HSE West, said the event would bring together international experts in the environmental health field to highlight new thinking, new science and new horizons in protecting our shared environment and the health of current and future generations.
Acting chief environmental health officer, at the Department of Health and Children, Ms Siobhan McEvoy, who will speak on Children's health and the environment explained that from an environmental health point of view, road safety was one of the key areas that needed to be addressed in terms of accident and injury.
