72 European Kids Die Each Day From Domestic Accidents

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 06 Nov 2008 - 3:00 PST

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Every day, 72 children in Europe die from domestic accidents, the equivalent to 3 per hour. In the UK alone, it is estimated that 1/3 of all accidental death happen in the homes. The causes of these deaths are all too familiar: electrocution/motor accidents (34%), drowning (13%), poisoning (5%), falls (4%) are the most common. Most of these according to the World Health Organization are perfectly avoidable. If the number of death from accident has decreased since 1997, the proportion of domestic death has however increased to over 30% even though progress has been made over the years to improve the awareness of parents to the dangers their children face.

On a survey performed in Germany, 2,082 respondents or nearly 1 in 4 (24.4%) of the total sample of 8,519 persons reported accidents during the last 12 months. Just 4 types, cuts, falls, burns and collisions account for nearly 94% of all accidents. With the combination of types, these 4 types affect 96% of all accident victims and 23.5% of the total population.

Why are the statistics showing no decline in children's domestic accidents? There are several potential causes to this:

1. There might be Safety Warning fatigues. The risks of lawsuits has fuelled an inflation of warning signs on anything from toys bags in McDonalds' Happy Meals® to every supermarket shopping bags or household items. This might have driven parents to just not pay attention to the warnings anymore as pretty much anything seems to not be suitable for children under three anymore. The cure might be defeating the purpose in other words. However, there are still plenty of dangerous elements at home for children to play with while at the same time, and the attention of parents might be down. Matches, lighters, gas stoves, pills, plastic bags, electrical plugs and a plethora of new electrical equipments are still within little hands' reach.

2. It is harder to reach homes with messages and regulations than it is to reach businesses. The perception is often that these accidents are unavoidable and therefore more awareness is still needed.

3. Even if the parents are more exposed to the household's dangers, that knowledge is not necessarily passed on to the younger children. With the pressure of modern society, both parents often work in an average household, dramatically cutting the time spent with children and limiting sharing time for risk prevention education, a gap which schools cannot compensate for. There are tools to mitigate this for small children such as the game for young children "Watch Out! - A Safe Start to Life" (http://www.4bambini.com) which helps children through visual cues memorize the appropriate behaviors to early life's most common dangers. There are as well plenty of internet sites dedicated to home safety but more often than not, the audience is the parents and not the children.

The insurance companies are trying to push the topic of home safety as a way to lower the amount of claims filed as a result of accidents, but it seems that no short term improvements are in sight.

For more information, please visit the World Health Organization and their web site at http://www.who.org.

World Health Organization