Child safety first

As he tugged on the cord, he suddenly felt it give – and a flood of boiling water from the kettle streamed over him. Screaming with pain, he was rushed to hospital and treated for severe burns.

Almost every day we are inundated with stories of violence and heartbreaking pictures of children killed or maimed as a result of war or disease. But the sad fact is that every year in South Africa, approximately 3 000 children under 15 years of age die – and many more are permanently disabled – as a result of accidental injury.

The Child Accident Prevention Foundation of South Africa (CAPFSA) recently released a report analysing over 88 000 cases of children who’d been admitted to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town since 1991

The report highlighted patterns and trends among these patients, with the ultimate goal of accident prevention. The results proved startling: many of the injuries occurred either in or close to the child’s home, and – in numerous cases – were preventable.

The report found the most common causes of injuries included falls (from beds, caregivers’ arms and playground equipment), traffic accidents – especially pedestrian ones in which children were knocked over by cars – and burns.

Although these results are by no means representative of South Africa as a whole, they do provide insight into where and how children are most at risk.

Although falls are seldom fatal, some cases have resulted in physical disability and/or permanent brain damage.

The CAPFSA report also revealed another major contributing factor to the problem of child injuries – the environment in which the child lives.

While the report helps to determine the type of accidents that affect children, its real objective is to develop prevention strategies. And that’s where the challenge lies. Education is the obvious solution but research has shown that, when used in isolation, education has little long-term benefit.

Du Toit notes that there’s often a peak period of changed behaviour, but then people slip back into their old habits.

Another strategy is the use of prevention, which involves putting structures in place either through legislation or in some other concrete way.

International research has shown that a combination of both education and prevention strategies is most likely to succeed, but child safety still remains a primarily long-term goal. Establishing prevention strategies usually involves a lot of red tape and bureaucracy, while educating successfully means changing people’s everyday behaviour – permanently. Neither approach is for the faint-hearted!

So how does South Africa fare in the arena of child safety strategies?
Unfortunately, not too well.

According to experts, one big problem is that organisations and government departments mainly work in isolation. Nevertheless, there have been a number of developments which show that we’re at least on the right path.

One of the most important projects so far has been the collecting and collating of statistical information relating to fatal and non-fatal injuries in South Africa

Other positive steps include: