NEWS AND NOTES
REVIEW OF PYJAMA FLAMMABILITY
New Zealand’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs has announced a review of the safety standard for children’s nightwear after three children wearing fire-retardant pyjamas were badly burned in 2007. There are four categories of fire hazard labeling for children’s nightwear but only one is for garments made from low-fire-hazard fabric. Clothes in categories one to three are all entitled to carry the same “low-fire-danger” label, even though the only requirements for the second and third categories are that the clothes are close-fitting or are all-in-one and made of knitted fabrics. Garments that do not meet any of these standards are in category four and must carry a fire-warning label. Minister of Consumer Affairs, Judith Tizard, said that the safety standard would be reviewed “in full” in time for next winter, but that there was a danger in recommending “one pair of (low-fire-danger) pyjamas over another”.
ICD-11 UNDER DEVELOPMENT
An article in the August edition of Injury Issues Monitor, the journal of the Research Centre for Injury Studies at the Flinders University of South Australia, describes the start of the development of the 11th edition of WHO International Classification of Diseases (ICD). (The Monitor can be accessed at http://www.nisu.flinders.edu.au/monitor/index.php.) For more than a century, the ICD has been the basis for international statistical summaries of causes of death and has been used for many other purposes. For the past 20 years or so, clinical modifications of the ICD have been used to summarize hospital inpatient data in many countries. Advances in medical knowledge and understanding of diseases, the emergence of new diseases such as SARS, the rapid and widespread rise of the use of computers, and particularly the development and availability of the world wide web have all occurred since the release of ICD-10. The possibilities and efficiencies of maintaining records electronically, of …
