Injury a leading killer of children in Asia
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
FE Report
Children in Asia are at great risk of dying from injuries such as drowning and road accidents. Surveys from Bangladesh, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam reveal that injury is the leading cause of death and disability among children older than one year of age in these countries, with drowning taking the heaviest toll.
A child born in Asia is still at greatest risk of dying in the first month of life. But the survey findings confirm what has often been known within communities across the region: that the risk of dying from injury increases after infancy as children grow more independent and interact with their environment and as the threat of death from infectious and non-communicable diseases falls. Nearly half of all child deaths included in the studies happened after the age of five. The most easily preventable causes were suffocation and drowning which mostly occurred in children under five years of age.
Bangladesh was one of the first countries where such a survey was conducted in 2004, revealing that drowning claims 1 of 4 lives among children aged between 1 and 17 years. It is currently estimated that 46 children drown everyday in Bangladesh and 17,000 annually. The drowning death toll peaks during the floods. In 2007, drowning was responsible for 87 percent of the total child deaths caused by the floods.
"Given the high prevalence of injury in children, UNICEF undertook a pilot initiative to respond to this situation. After two years of implementation, this project has proved that most deaths could be averted by some simple safety interventions like giving swimming lessons to children, bamboo fencing of ponds, community awareness and daycare centres that provide supervised care for children," said Iyorlumun Uhaa, Acting Country Representative of UNICEF Bangladesh.
The research, conducted over the last seven years, was spearheaded by UNICEF and The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), working in partnership with local public health teams. Responses were gathered from face-to-face interviews done with more than half a million households covering more than 2 million people in the five countries. For the first time ever in the countries covered, the causes of death and disability among a representative sample of all children up to 18 years were reliably recorded. The results highlight injury - in its different forms - as an acute menace to children's lives.
Over the past few decades, Asia has made major progress in cutting the number of deaths among children-under five, with extended vaccination coverage, better access to sanitation and good hygiene and improvements in nutrition playing a critical role.
"This evidence overwhelmingly confirms that injury is and has been a major killer. It is now time to make it a public health necessity and to reverse the tide of child injury related deaths" said Pete Peterson, President of TASC.
Children in Asia are at great risk of dying from injuries such as drowning and road accidents. Surveys from Bangladesh, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam reveal that injury is the leading cause of death and disability among children older than one year of age in these countries, with drowning taking the heaviest toll.
A child born in Asia is still at greatest risk of dying in the first month of life. But the survey findings confirm what has often been known within communities across the region: that the risk of dying from injury increases after infancy as children grow more independent and interact with their environment and as the threat of death from infectious and non-communicable diseases falls. Nearly half of all child deaths included in the studies happened after the age of five. The most easily preventable causes were suffocation and drowning which mostly occurred in children under five years of age.
Bangladesh was one of the first countries where such a survey was conducted in 2004, revealing that drowning claims 1 of 4 lives among children aged between 1 and 17 years. It is currently estimated that 46 children drown everyday in Bangladesh and 17,000 annually. The drowning death toll peaks during the floods. In 2007, drowning was responsible for 87 percent of the total child deaths caused by the floods.
"Given the high prevalence of injury in children, UNICEF undertook a pilot initiative to respond to this situation. After two years of implementation, this project has proved that most deaths could be averted by some simple safety interventions like giving swimming lessons to children, bamboo fencing of ponds, community awareness and daycare centres that provide supervised care for children," said Iyorlumun Uhaa, Acting Country Representative of UNICEF Bangladesh.
The research, conducted over the last seven years, was spearheaded by UNICEF and The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), working in partnership with local public health teams. Responses were gathered from face-to-face interviews done with more than half a million households covering more than 2 million people in the five countries. For the first time ever in the countries covered, the causes of death and disability among a representative sample of all children up to 18 years were reliably recorded. The results highlight injury - in its different forms - as an acute menace to children's lives.
Over the past few decades, Asia has made major progress in cutting the number of deaths among children-under five, with extended vaccination coverage, better access to sanitation and good hygiene and improvements in nutrition playing a critical role.
"This evidence overwhelmingly confirms that injury is and has been a major killer. It is now time to make it a public health necessity and to reverse the tide of child injury related deaths" said Pete Peterson, President of TASC.