Children born in deprived areas to poor parents die in greater numbers in road accidents, fires, falls, poisoning and drowning incidents, according to the ‘World Report on Child Injury Prevention 2008’

Children from poorer families are far more likely to die or be harmed than their better-off counterparts, according to the World Health Organisation’s ‘World Report on Child Injury Prevention 2008’ which claims that 1.9 children in every 100,000, from higher managerial and professional families, die every year from injury or accidental poisoning, but that the figure rises to 25.4 in every 100,000 children whose parents have never worked or are long-term unemployed.

“Poorer children have not shared in all the gains of children of wealthier nations,” says Elizabeth Towner, a child health expert at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who contributed to the report. “Childhood injury is a cause of social injustice that needs to be addressed.”

Millions of children suffer permanent damage and need long-term hospital care and rehabilitation. “The costs of such treatment can throw an entire family into poverty,” says Margaret Chan, WHO director general.

Africa has the highest rate overall for accidental deaths. The incidence there is 10 times higher than in high-income countries such as Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and Britain, which have the lowest rates of child injury, according to the report.

The WHO report reveals the global toll of preventable injuries. “We’re here to ring the alarm bell on child unintentional injuries,” says Dr Etienne Krug, director of the WHO’s department of violence and injury prevention and disability. “Every year, 830,000 children die from unintentional injuries, sometimes still called accidents. It is like wiping out the whole child population of a city like Chicago or Marseille.”

The leading cause of childhood injury and death is road accidents which kill 260,000 a year globally and injure around 10 million. Drowning, burns, falls and unintended poisoning round out the top five causes. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, chairman of the Make Roads Safe campaign, calls the report “a wake-up call on child road deaths”.

He adds: “Road traffic injuries in developing countries have reached epidemic proportions and a coordinated response is urgently needed. If we are serious about halting the rise in child road injury, the international community must agree a decade of sustained action between 2010 and 2020.”

The report, compiled using information from 200 experts around the world, is the first to assess the global scale of the problem and seeks to spur public health and development groups into action, say officials.

“We were surprised at how big the problem was at a global level,” Krug, who put together the report, says. “There is ignorance about the magnitude and the potential for prevention.” Around 95% of the deaths occur in the developing world, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, but the problem is acute in richer nations as well where deaths from accidents disproportionately affect the poor.

About half of these deaths could be prevented by expanding the use of car seats, covering wells and pools of water in areas where children play, erecting barriers to keep young people away from road construction, and other proven measures, the report states.

If proven prevention measures were adopted everywhere, at least 1,000 children’s lives could be saved every day, the report suggests. But children from poorer families and communities still remain at increased risk of injury because they are less likely to benefit from prevention programmes and high-quality health services, says Chan.

The top five causes of child injury deaths are:

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk, December 10, 2008
            http://uk.reuters.com, December 10, 2008
            http://news.bbc.co.uk, December 10, 2008
             PTI, December 10, 2008

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