Acid attacks — mostly on girls and women — cost £60m a year in UK
London — Acid attacks cost £60m a year, according to experts who say the number of attacks — which often target girls and women — has more than trebled since 2014. The analysis, released on Monday, is the first attempt to evaluate the economic effect of acid attacks in the UK, which is looking at new measures to tackle the devastating crime. Almost 950 attacks were reported in 2017, according to the charity Acid Survivors’ Trust International (Asti). "There is an obvious moral case for intervention, but these figures show that the costs associated with acid attacks are astronomical," Asti executive director Jaf Shah told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Asti and economics consultancy firm Frontier Economics estimated each attack cost £63,000 and predicted the total cost between 2015 and 2020 would be about £345m. They looked at costs to the health service, including medical and psychosocial support, costs to the police, judicial and penal systems and the cost to victims of lost earni...
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