<http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=117&art_id=nw20070413120449
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Spanish docs, nurses 'boozing and cruising'

   April 13 2007 at 12:50PM

The Spanish nurses and doctors who save lives while on the job become a
life-threatening menace when they slide behind the wheel of a car,
according to a study released this week.

Spaniards are already among the worst drink-and-drive offenders in Europe,
with 30 to 50 percent of crash fatalities linked to alcohol, reports the
study, published on Thursday in the British journal BMC Public Health.

Comparable figures for other European countries range from 40 percent in
Ireland to 14 percent in Britain and Germany.

But the study, based on interviews with more than 16 000 Spanish
university graduates, also found that doctors and and nurses reigned
unchallenged when it came to driving while under the influence.

"Particularly worrisome is the fact that health professionals reported
this habit at even higher rates," wrote lead author Maria Segui-Gomez, an
epidemiologist at the University in Navarra and at John Hopkins University
in the United States, along with four co-authors.

Doctors of both sexes and females nurses were twenty percent more likely
to drive after having consumed alcohol that any other category of
university graduate.

Male nurses were particularly cavalier, boozing and cruising twice as
often.

Nearly half of those questioned admitted to having driven after consuming
alcohol, 30 percent saying they did so "sometimes". There was also
drive-and-drink gender gap, with men nearly twice as likely to hit the
bottle before turning over the engine.

A third of all respondents in the survey said that that occasionally
indulging in binge drinking.

In Europe, there were 127 000 deaths in vehicle crashes and 2.4 million
injuries in 2005, according to the World Health Organisation. The
estimated cost of both exceeds two percent of GDP each year.

Drivers with blood alcohol levels as little as 0.02 to 0.05 grams per 100
millimetres sustain three times more chances of being killed in a single
vehicle crash that drivers with no alcohol at all, the report said.

That number shoots of to 50 times more likely for 16-20 year old males
with with alcohol blood levels of 0.08 to 0.1 g/100ml - roughly the
equivalent of three beers for a 70 kilogram man.