Abstract
Non-fatal injuries have a significant impact on disability, productivity, and economic cost, and first-aid can play an important role in improving non-fatal injury outcomes. Data collected from a census conducted as part of a drowning prevention project in Bangladesh was used to quantify the impact of first-aid provided by trained and untrained providers on non-fatal injuries. The census covered approximately 1.2 million people from 7 sub-districts of Bangladesh. Around 10% individuals reported an injury event in the six-month recall period. The most common injuries were falls (39%) and cuts injuries (23.4%). Overall, 81.7% of those with non-fatal injuries received first aid from a provider of whom 79.9% were non-medically trained. Individuals who received first-aid from a medically trained provider had more severe injuries and were 1.28 times more likely to show improvement or recover compared to those who received first-aid from an untrained provider. In Bangladesh, first-aid for non-fatal injuries are primarily provided by untrained providers. Given the large number of untrained providers and the known benefits of first aid to overcome morbidities associated with non-fatal injuries, public health interventions should be designed and implemented to train and improve skills of untrained providers.
Highlights
Injuries are a relatively neglected health issue, [1,2,3,4] around 4.7 million people die annually as a result of intentional and unintentional injuries which together account for 8.5% of all deaths globally [5,6]
The objective of this study was to quantify the impact of first aid provided by trained and untrained providers on severe, non-fatal injuries in rural Bangladesh using population-based data collected from a baseline census conducted in 2013 as part of a drowning prevention study
21.6% of the respondents were less than 10 years of age, 72.6% were 10 to 65 years of age and only 5.9% were more than 65 years old (Table 1) [27]
Summary
Injuries are a relatively neglected health issue, [1,2,3,4] around 4.7 million people die annually as a result of intentional and unintentional injuries which together account for 8.5% of all deaths globally [5,6]. In 2010, an estimated 11% of the total cause of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) was attributed to injuries with over 90% of the DALYs lost occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [7,8]. Non-fatal injuries occur more often than fatal injuries and have a significant impact on disability, productivity, cost of treatment and rehabilitation [9,10,11]. It has been forecast that the magnitude of both non-fatal and fatal injuries will decline in high-income countries, but will continue to be a significant cause of death and disability in the developing world over the 20 years [1,8]. Public Health 2017, 14, 762; doi:10.3390/ijerph14070762 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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