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By APD Writer Muhammad Sohail
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 28 (APD) - A Pakistani scholar has published a first-ever research piece about deaths occurred due to selfie, a photograph that one has taken of oneself, local media reported on Monday.
“A man is run over by a train in Rawalpindi city of Pakistan, three women are crushed in a cave near Lake Saiful Muluk in northwest Pakistan, a man is mauled to death by an elephant in Kenya, three members of a family drown in a river, a boy shoots himself in the head in India, and a man falls 17 stories to his death in Russia.”
“What is the common thread among these tragic stories? It is the selfie,” said a first-ever research published by Pakistani scholar namely Mustafa Mehmood Ayubzai.
The research was published in The Annals of Emergency Medicine, one of the highest-ranking American journals in emergency medicine.
According to Ayubzai, selfies pose a great threat to the lives of people and there is no prior medical literature on the severity of the issue as at least 75 people died around the world between 2014 to mid-2016 in 52 different cases of disastrous selfie attempts.
Selfie, which was declared as “the word of the year” by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, means “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
Selfies are very popular with young people, but age does not always provide wisdom, as many older people have also gotten themselves killed taking bizarre or dangerous pictures, said Ayubzai, who hails from Pakistan and is currently working at a hospital in Ireland.
Recognizing selfies as being a potential health hazard, the report said in 2015 alone, 49 incidents of selfie-related fatalities with an age range of 14 to 32 years related, and of these, three-quarters of the victims were male.
“The mechanisms of injury included falls from heights, drowning, falling off of or being hit by a train, gunshot, grenade, plane crash, car crash and animal attacks,” explained the author who was inspired to write the paper after a 23-year-old man fell down from a cliff while taking the ‘perfect selfie’.
After a series of selfie-related deaths, the Russian ministry of health and internal affairs launched the safe selfie campaign, after which police officers hold selfie safety lessons in schools.
In 2017, two deadliest selfie-related incidents were reported in Pakistan; first when three members of a family drowned in a river after trying to take a selfie in the water; second when three ladies were buried to death when they attempted to take a selfie under an iceberg.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
