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There
are currently between 250,000 - 400,000 Americans living with a spinal
cord injury. More than 13,000 additional people are
injured each year.
Every 41 minutes another person
sustains a spinal cord injury
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The
cost to maintain the health, accessibility to the
community, and other direct costs associated with these
chronic injuries is approximately $25,213 per person per
year depending on the level of injury. This yearly
charge totals $11,345,850,000, solely for direct costs
related to the injury.
More than half of those injured
are between the ages of 16-30
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The
average first year costs for the newly injured,
including initial hospitalization, rehabilitation, home
modifications, and durable medical equipment such as
wheelchairs, amounts to over $244,000 per person. This
adds another $3,187,616,000 to the aggregate national
bill. Thus, the total direct costs for spinal cord
injury are a staggering $14,533,466,000.
Even modest improvements in function would cut medical
costs
by over two-thirds per spinal cord injured person per year
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Indirect costs from loss of productive employment due to
unemployment, reduced employment or changes in
employment necessitated by level or severity of injury
average $13,000 annually. Thus added to the above
figures, is another astounding loss to the nation of
$5,850,000,000.
These costs amount to $170 every year, for every taxpayer
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Thus,
without even addressing the loss of family cohesion,
social contacts, loss of other family members’ income
while caring for the injured individuals, this nation is
suffering a yearly economic drain of at least $
20,383,466,000. This is more than the entire budget of
the National Institutes of Health for the year 2001!
The nation currently invests less than 1% of the costs of
spinal cord injury into
research that has the potential to restore function and
substantially reduce the costs
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Spinal
cord injury research benefits those with stroke,
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, multiple
sclerosis, transverse myelitis, traumatic brain injury
and many other traumas and diseases of the central
nervous system.
You or someone you love will benefit from this critical
research
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