BMJ  2008;336:1388-1389 (21 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a298

Editorials

Preventing injury in childhood

Injury surveillance in the UK lags behind other European countries

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

UK Child Safety Week will be launched by the Child Accident Prevention Trust on 23 June this year. Its aim is to raise awareness of childhood accidents and prevention strategies.

Unintentional injury accounts for around one in five of all deaths in children and adolescents in the European Union with the highest injury rates occurring in Greece, Estonia, and Belgium.1 In the United Kingdom, unintentional injury is a leading cause of death and illness in children and is the most common cause of hospital admission—it accounts for around two million visits to accident and emergency departments each year, at a cost to the NHS of around £146m ({euro}182m; $288m).2 Injury in childhood is strongly associated with poverty, and death rates from unintentional injury in the UK are around three times higher in children from the poorest families than in those from the least poor families; little is known about . . . [Full text of this article]

Graham Kirkwood, research fellow, Allyson Pollock, professor

1 Centre for International Public Health Policy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AG

graham.kirkwood@ed.ac.uk


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Rapid Responses:

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Drastic but the least Studied
Dewan S. Billal, Ph.D, et al.
bmj.com, 20 Jun 2008 [Full text]
Recycling nonsense
Charles Essex
bmj.com, 21 Jun 2008 [Full text]
Re: Recycling nonsense
Guy A Chapman
bmj.com, 23 Jun 2008 [Full text]
Re: Recycling nonsense
Peter W Ward
bmj.com, 23 Jun 2008 [Full text]
Schools can oppose safety measures for spurious reasons
Peter M English
bmj.com, 23 Jun 2008 [Full text]
no such thing as an 'accident'?
helene brandon
bmj.com, 25 Jun 2008 [Full text]
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