Abstract
BackgroundThe burden of injury from violence and the costs attributable to violence are extremely high in Colombia. Despite a dramatic decline in homicides over the last ten years, homicide rate in Medellin, Colombia second largest city continues to rank among the highest of cities in Latin America. This study aims to estimate the prevalence and distribution of witnesses, victims and perpetrators of different forms of interpersonal violence in a representative sample of the general population in Medellin in 2007.MethodsA face-to-face survey was carried out on a random selected, non-institutionalized population aged 12 to 60 years, with a response rate of 91% yielding 2,095 interview responses.ResultsWe present the rates of prevalence for having been a witness, victim, or perpetrator for different forms of violence standardized using the WHO truncated population pyramid to allow for cross-national comparison. We also present data on verbal aggression, fraud and deception, yelling and heavy pranks, unarmed aggression during last year, and armed threat, other severe threats, robbery, armed physical aggression, and sexual aggression during the lifetime, by age, sex, marital and socioeconomic status, and education. Men reported the highest prevalence of being victims, perpetrators and witnesses in all forms of violence, except for robbery and sexual violence. The number of victims per perpetrator was positively correlated with the severity of the type of violence. The highest victimization proportions over the previous twelve months occurred among minors. Perpetrators are typically young unmarried males from lower socio-economic strata.ConclusionsDue to very low proportion of victimization report to authorities, periodic surveys should be included in systems for epidemiological monitoring of violence, not only of victimization but also for perpetrators. Victimization information allows quantifying the magnitude of different forms of violence, while data on factors associated with aggression and perpetrators are necessary to estimate risk and protective factors that are essential to sound policies for violence prevention formulation.
Highlights
The burden of injury from violence and the costs attributable to violence are extremely high in Colombia
The rate declined as low as 34 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005 [5] to increase again to 94.4 in the last two years [6]. Even having such an important and long lasting problem, most of the information on violence in Colombia continues to be based on mortality statistics, police reports, statistics on victims attended by the health care system, or reports to the justice system, all of which may severely underestimate the magnitude of the violence due to inaccurate reporting [7,8]
In order to allow for cross-country comparison, adjusted prevalence rates were estimated based on the universal population truncated for ages between 15 and 60 [15] (Table 2)
Summary
This study aims to estimate the prevalence and distribution of witnesses, victims and perpetrators of different forms of interpersonal violence in a representative sample of the general population in Medellin in 2007. Among WHO Member States that reported data on violence, Colombia ranks second in terms of cost of violence after Burundi. It was the country with the highest cost of violence as a percentage of GNP in the Americas, followed by El Salvador (2.0% of GNP) and Venezuela (1.9% of GNP) in the year 2002 [9]. The purpose of this article is to estimate the prevalence and distribution of witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of different forms of interpersonal violence in a representative sample of the general population in Medellin in 2007
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