Article from:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr46/en/index.html
WHO and UNICEF had said that more than 2000 children die every day as a result of unintentional or accidental injuries. Every year tens of millions more worldwide are taken to hospitals with injuries that often leave them with lifelong disabilities. However, it is important to know that these unintentional or accidental injuries are preventable. The World report on child injury prevention provides the first comprehensive global assessment of unintentional childhood injuries and prescribes measures to prevent them. If we adopt these proven prevention measures everywhere, we can at least save 1000 children’s lives. Child injuries are also an important public health and development issues because millions of children suffer non-fatal injuries that often require long-term hospitalization and rehabilitation and costs of treatment is very expensive that it can make an entire family into poverty. One other important fact is that children in poorer families and communities are at higher risk of injury because they are less likely to benefit from prevention programs and high quality health services. When we can save 2000 children’s lives every day with just proven prevention measures, we must make it work. Measures of some proven prevention are laws on child-appropriate seatbelts and helmets, hot tap water temperature regulations, redesigning nursery furniture, toys and playground equipment, and many others. Things that were mentioned here are nothing that really costs money to make things happen but we can just make it happen by caring more about the issue and educating people about importance of wearing seatbelts and helmets.
A large part of these children dying and suffering lifelong health problems is because their families think if they can still function without going to the hospital, they're fine. The hospital fees are so expensive that it just doesn't seem like a reasonable option to them. Because of this, normally treatable injuries go on to further hurt the child, damage their systems, and ultimately kill them. Simple measures could be taken to keep the child safe and avoid hospital fees, instead of having to pick one or the other. In any sense, this is still a warning that we need to equalize the opportunity to good health care and to make sure our health care facilities hit a certain set of standards.
ReplyDeleteThe last point you raised seems to hold merit: from what has been said there seems to be much that can be done to improve these statistics without a high cost. This is because some of the ‘proven prevention measures’ mentioned in the article are things like: laws on child-appropriate seatbelts/helmets; hot tap water temperature regulations, child-resistant closures on medicine bottles/lighters, redesigning nursery furniture/toys/playground equipment. To effect these sorts of changes wouldn’t seem to incur huge costs. Instead only a modified perspective is needed.
ReplyDeleteLaws only go so far to help prevent accidents. Having the public be aware of the dangers, and teach them how to avoid them, would be much more effective than having laws that state "this is not allowed", which is the case with seat belt laws. This is especially the case since parents are the only ones who can implement these measures, so it doesn't help to just have politicians and health workers know what's good for kids, parents have to know too. If any law should be implemented, it should be a law to force education on matters like this, since it is often the case that parents simply don't know better or are surprised that something is actually a threat to their kids.
ReplyDeleteThe main issue here is the economic issues that so many families struggle with every day. It is often far easier said than done to be able to safely and effectively childproof a house. This lack of financial abilities puts poorer households at an unfair disadvantage to the more wealthy families who have the disposable income to effectively child proof a house. The only way there could be a possible solution for these poorer families who can't afford expensive childproofing is to have a government regulated system of insuring the safety of their children.
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