Children in danger

Press, 25 November 1981, Page 25

Children in danger

Compared with other developed countries, New Zealand has one of the highest death rates for pre-school children. Among one to four-year-old children, about four out of every 10 deaths are the result of accidents. Children’s accidents are often thought one of the immutable hazards of life. But they are usually preventable and are the result of lack of care or attention by supervising adults. A child health and development book will be published by the Department of Health early next year. This looks closely at the problem of accident's to young children and how they can be avoided. Statistics about injuries from accidents are difficult to get. One estimate, based

on a large child-health study done in Dunedin, is that at least 25,000 pre-school children need medical treatment for accidental injuries every year, some of them more than once, and this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. In 1978, 2 per cent of all pre-school children in New Zealand were admitted to hospital as a result of accidental injury. Among pre-school children, those under the age of four are most at risk. Boys seem to be more accident-prone than girls. The accidents occur either at home or on the roads; burns, poisonings, falls

and traffic accidents are the most common but drowning is also important. New Zealand has one of the worst records in the world of unrestrained preschool children being injured or killed in traffic accidents. Why New Zealand children are at more risk than most other children is difficult to establish with certainty. The department believes that one underlying factor is the fatalistic attitude prevalent towards accidents. Faced with a complex variety of causes people feel powerless to deal with the problem. To prevent accidents it is

not necessary to remove all the causes, but rather to break the chain of events that leads up to accidents. The department cites a classic accident sequence: A child is crawling on the floor near the stove; the jug has just boiled and is sitting on the stove with its cord dangling; the parent goes to answer the ring on the telephone or the knock on the door; the child pulls the jug down on itself. A change in only one aspect of this sequence could have prevented the accident. Was it necessary for the child to have been near the stove? Could the jug have

been at the back of the stove rather than the font? Could the cord have been shorter or hooked up out of reach? Could the child have been taken to the telephone or door, or somewhere else? Could the door or telephone have been ignored? Could some other person have answered the door or telephone, or have minded the child? Children live in the same dangerous world as adults, but lack the ability and training of an adult to recognise and stay out of trouble. Children must cope with high-speed traffic well before they are capable of judging

the speed of cars (this comes at about the age of eight years) and with creeks, swimming pools and the sea before they can swim. They cannot distinguish between a soft drink and poison because they cannot read the label, or between pills and sweets if both are sugar-coated and brightlycoloured.