In less than a year, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund will release the first ever World report on child injury prevention. It is expected that the report will become a milestone in the child injury prevention field, and will provide an opportunity to focus attention on the issue and generate additional action on the part of governments and their partners. Readers of Injury Prevention are already contributing to the development of the report and can play an important role in its launch and follow-up.

Child injuries are a global public health problem. According to the WHO’s Global Burden of Disease data, around 875 000 children under the age of 18 years died as a result of injury or violence in 2002. Injuries are a leading cause of death for all children after their first birthday. Beyond the fatalities, for every child who dies, there are several thousand children who live on with varying degrees of disability.

For all the main …