Childhood Injuries in Singapore: Can Local Physicians and the Healthcare System Do More to Confront This Public Health Concern?

Alvin Ong,Farhad Vasanwala,Sher Low

doi:10.3390/ijerph13070718

Abstract

Childhood injury is one of the leading causes of death globally. Singapore is no exception to this tragic fact, with childhood injuries accounting up to 37% of Emergency Department visits. Hence, it is important to understand the epidemiology and risk factors of childhood injuries locally. A search for relevant articles published from 1996–2016 was performed on PubMed, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar using keywords relating to childhood injury in Singapore. The epidemiology, mechanisms of injury, risk factors and recommended prevention strategies of unintentional childhood injuries were reviewed and described. Epidemiological studies have shown that childhood injury is a common, preventable and significant public health concern in Singapore. Home injuries and falls are responsible for majority of the injuries. Injuries related to childcare products, playground and road traffic accidents are also important causes. Healthcare professionals and legislators play an important role in raising awareness and reducing the incidence of childhood injuries in Singapore. For example, despite legislative requirements for many years, the low usage of child restraint seats in Singapore is worrisome. Thus, greater efforts in public health education in understanding childhood injuries, coupled with more research studies to evaluate the effectiveness and deficiencies of current prevention strategies will be necessary.

Highlights

Childhood injury is one of the leading causes of death globally [1,2,3,4], leading to about 40% of all child deaths [1,2,4]
The papers are grouped into article, nation-wide and community studies; treated at are grouped review childhood article, nation-wide community studies; childhood injuries emergencyinto departments; injuries relatedand to specific devices or accessories; playgroundrelated injuries; injuries related to drowning; andinjuries specific injuries
Treated at emergency departments; childhood related to specific devices or accessories; Part B relates to the possible based prevention and strategies in addressing playground-related injuries; injurieslocally related to drowning; specific injuries. issues mentioned in is reviewed in the discussion section of this article

Summary

Introduction

Childhood injury is one of the leading causes of death globally [1,2,3,4], leading to about 40% of all child deaths [1,2,4]. 2015, injuries accounted for 364,824 deaths in infants and children aged between 0–4 years [5]. It is a growing public health problem that needs to be urgently tackled and looked into, both in developing as well as developed countries [2]. In the United States, almost 14% of emergency department visits in the population under 18 years of age are injury related [6]. Injuries may result in physical, mental or psychological disabilities which adversely affect the quality of life of the casualties as well as their caregivers [2]. The physical and emotional care needs and burden may be enormous and difficult to quantify with the available statistical data. Utilising the concept of disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as a surrogate indicator, it is estimated by WHO that within the age group of 0–14 years, 1.2 million DALYs is lost in the higher income population, 19 million DALYs for the middle income and 28 million DALYs for the lower income population, respectively [2]

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Discussion

Conclusion