Deaths among homeless people in Istanbul
Introduction
As in most other countries of the world, homelessness is a big social problem in Turkey as well.
Insufficient efforts of competent authorities in solving this problem led to an increase in the number of homeless people during the last few years [1].
There are no special shelters prepared and no special social centres established for them. As a consequence, these people are faced with grave difficulties in self-maintenance which are further exacerbated by adverse weather conditions.
The aim of this study is to attract the attention to the preventable causes of deaths of the homeless population.
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Material and method
All cases of suspicious death occurring in the municipal area of Istanbul are referred to the Mortuary Section of the Council of Forensic Medicine for medicolegal autopsy.
In this paper, documents and autopsy reports of this department were reviewed: The autopsy material of the period January 1st, 1991–December 31st, 1995 comprised 10583 cases. Among them, 126 individuals were regarded as homeless. Cases with incomplete records were excluded. We tried to assess the approximate age, in addition
Results
One hundred and twenty of the 126 individuals (95%) were males, the remaining four females (3%) and two transsexuals (2%).
Sixty one percent of the cases were estimated to be in the age group of 31–50 years.
Ninety-four corpses (75%) had been found outdoors (e.g. alleys, parks, under bridges, beneath castle walls or in old vehicles), whereas 32 corpses (25%) were found indoors (e.g. in abandoned buildings, central heating rooms or public toilets).
Scene investigation had been carried out in 54
Discussion
In the present study, various aspects of death among homeless individuals in Istanbul were evaluated and compared with the data in the literature on the subject.
The over-representation of males in the homeless population in our study (120 among total of 126 individuals) is in accordance with the data of other studies on the subject 2, 3, 4.
There is an accumulation of death cases in the age group of 31–50 years, a finding also comparable to the results in other studies 2, 3.
Seventy five percent
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