As knife crime continues to be a major issue in Germany, one German women’s magazine has written an article on the treatment of stab wounds in its “health and fitness” section.
The April edition of the women’s magazine Illu der Frau contained the article “How do I treat a stab wound?” along with an adjacent subtitle which highlights the growing problem of knife crime across the country, Tichy’s Einblick reports.
The article aims to give practical advice for those who may be victims or witness stabbing attacks saying, “Importantly, before you provide first aid, make sure the perpetrators have disappeared, your own safety is a priority.”
While attacks and murders using knives have often become major headline stories — particularly those which involve migrants stabbing young German women to death, such as the cases of 15-year-old Mia in the town of Kandel in 2017 — actual reliable statistics on knife crime are sketchy at best in Germany.
In an article published earlier this year, German newspaper Die Welt noted the lack of statistics for knife crime citing the Union of Police who said that it could take years for reliable statistics to be made available.
The Conference of Interior Ministers (IMK) had previously called for detailed knife crime data to be included in Federal Police statistics but according to Oliver Malchow, federal chairman of the Union of Police, the process could take until at least 2022 to implement.
Along with high-profile murders, Germany has also seen a number of incidents of mass stabbings, including earlier this year in February when five cities all saw stabbings on the same day in Cologne, Lingen, Nuremberg, Mülheim an der Ruhr, and Frankfurt. Several people were hospitalised as a result of the attacks.
The stabbings came only months after stabbing attacks in Nuremberg that saw three women hospitalised, two with life-threatening injuries, all in the span of only four hours.