Push for doctors at high-risk music festivals

Health Minister Brad Hazzard wants specialist medical teams installed at every ‘high-risk’ music festival across NSW.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard speaks to the media yesterday. Picture: AAP

Health Minister Brad Hazzard wants emergency specialist medical teams installed at every “high-risk” music festival across NSW, with the high financial costs to be borne by event organisers.

The push comes after 14 revellers had to be rushed to Sydney hospitals in critical conditions over the Australia Day weekend, some of whom may have died or been left with permanent brain damage had they not received medical attention at the festival.

Mr Hazzard said an estimated $500,000 had been spent on ­deploying medical teams at three music festivals in NSW at the weekend, with much of that money directed to a rolling social media and TV advertising campaign aimed at warning festivalgoers about the health dangers of taking drugs.

While the $500,000 was taxpayer money, from March 1 festival organisers will have to pay for the emergency medical staff and other services, including the media safety campaign.

But Mr Hazzard said those costs had to be weighed against the $35,000 a night it cost to keep a patient in an intensive care unit or the millions it costs to care for a patient with permanent neurological damage.

Mr Hazzard said last night the use of “mobile emergency departments” at music festival venues had been a national first, and had “come about out of desperation” following the deaths of five young people at music festivals in Sydney since September.

It was a double-pronged ­approach: saturation-level warnings to festivalgoers about the dangers of drugs alongside a clear message that if they got into trouble a team of three critical care doctors, a paramedic and four specialist nurses were there “to effectively wrap their arms around them and make sure they don’t die or become disabled”.

“People would have died over this weekend if we hadn’t done what we did,” he said.

“Six were intubated — they had tubes put down their throat to assist their breathing. A number of other measures were taken to make sure they stayed alive.

“This tells us … that we have a very serious problem.”

NSW Ambulance retrieval specialist Sarah Coombes said “a number of patients” who had been treated at the festival would have also been left permanently brain damaged if they had not ­received critical care immediately.

She said patients who had overdosed on drugs had presented in an “agitated delirious state with high temperatures” and had to be rapidly sedated and cooled down.

“As the temperature gets above a certain level you start to effectively cook the organs in your body and your organs and your muscles will start to break down,” she said.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said yesterday she was “concerned” young people were not taking the dire health warnings seriously.

“The flippant attitude cannot be tolerated; you cannot think it’s OK for you and your friends to take ecstasy,” Ms Berejiklian said.

NSW Health has confirmed 25 people aged 16 to 25 had to be treated in hospital, 14 of whom had required “extremely high-level” care.

Only two festivalgoers remained in hospital last night, including a 21-year-old man who collapsed at the Hardcore Till I Die festival on Saturday and is in a serious but stable condition.