If a few months ago we started offering you articles on the safety of children in the home, today we want to complete them with a review of the causes of child accidents (inside and outside the home) according to the ages of the children.
No parent wants their children to happen, but the first cause of death in children up to 15 years in developed countries is accidents.
An accident is a fact that happens by chance, without anyone planning it, and this could make us think that we have no control over them, but I think it is not so. For example, my daughter loves to "search for treasures" on the street, she is able to find objects that nobody else repairs, but sometimes she gets off the curb near parked cars. To the extent that I am very insistent and explain the consequences that this action can have (a vehicle starts and runs over it) I am sure that it will finally internalize the need to prevent an unexpected event.
Some people refer to the control of injuries, that is, anyone can fall off the bicycle, anyone can have a traffic accident, anyone can fall from a tree. But if we wear helmets, we tie ourselves with the belt and do not climb on very high branches, the risk of serious injuries may be reduced.
So our role as parents can consist of combining both approaches: prevention and control of injuries, and transferring our approach to children. According to the World Health Organization, the main causes of accident mortality among children up to 15 years are (in this order): traffic accidents, unintentional injuries (choking, suffocation or strangulation), drowning, falls, burns, poisoning or poisoning and suicide.
According to the ADESLAS document “Plan for the Prevention of Child Accidents” our country occupies the 8th place in the world with the lowest mortality due to childhood accidents, a rate of 8.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.
I have collected some information that specify the age of accident victims according to their causes:
Traffic accident injuries occur mostly among children aged five to nine years, followed by the group of 10 to 14 and finally babies up to four.
Drowning manifests mostly in preteen children.
If we talk about burns they occur mostly in the smallest and the other two groups are matched.
As for poisoning, it seems clear that the most vulnerable are babies (because they can have access to dangerous products that they do not know and take them to their mouths), children from 10 to 14 years follow (some of them try alcohol or others drugs), and the group least affected by these types of accidents are those of five to nine years.
The falls are produced following the same pattern as injuries due to traffic accidents in terms of affectation according to age.
In theory it could be said that accidents are likely to occur after the child begins to walk, and also that when they turn seven or eight years the tendency to decrease again in adolescence is reduced. But in practice we see that this is not the case: an eight-year-old boy who swallows a coin, another 12-year-old who jumps on his mountain bike without a helmet, 14-year-old boys who play to push themselves uncontrollably to the edge of the pool, etc
And as for the total number of children injured, the Mapfre Foundation has a Study on child accidents treated at the Health Centers. It reveals among other very enriching information, the results of two different surveys conducted with samples and methodologies also different.
The National Health Survey of 2006 shows that there were more than 700,000 children aged 0 to 14 who suffered some type of accident, and the D.A.D.O. of the National Institute of Consumption in 2007, through household surveys, reveals the figure of 230,402 accidents.
No doubt they are data that differ greatly from each other, however what we have to stay with parents is with the basic idea that up to 15 years children can suffer accidents, and that this is the main cause of mortality in countries developed.
