Article Text
Abstract
Background Injuries are a global public health problem, and child injuries are particularly outstanding considering that children are free from most other health problems. We carried out an investigation on injuries in three primary and two secondary schools in Xining in 2003, and the results showed that the incidence of injuries was as high as 26.24%. Interventions were taken to reduce injuries in one primary and one secondary schools in Xining from 2006 to 2008.
Methods Baseline survey was carried out before intervention. School leaders, teachers, students, doctors and CDC experts were invited to devise intervention measures and discuss the implementation approaches. Between 2006 and 2008, several interventions were applied: dispensing injury prevention brochures; composing injury prevention knowledge into songs and printing them on school timetable; making posters of fall prevention; compiling the proposal of creating a safe and peaceful school environment and printing related contents on the outer packing of ballpoint pen; dispensing accidental childhood injury prevention handbook named “love, with safety first”; and sponsoring a drawing contest with the theme of injury prevention. Besides these measures, we also heightened and strengthened stair railings, placed warning signs on accident-prone locations, and improved school security.
Results The results of baseline survey showed that student knowledge awareness rate of fall injury prevention was 63.76%; the overall incidence of injuries in students in one year was 21.51%; and the leading types of injuries were fall (8.69%), collision (3.85%), traffic accident (2.14%), burn (1.71%), cut (1.28%) and animal bites (1.28%) according to the injury frequency. After intervention, the awareness rate of fall injury prevention in students increased to 98.86%; the overall incidence of injuries decreased to 18.06%; and the incidences of fall, collision, traffic accident, burn, cut and animal bites changed to 8.19%, 3.03%, 1.82%, 1.52%, 1.37% and 0.91%, respectively.
Conclusions Interventions could effectively reduce injuries among students. Our work laid a foundation for further interventions on child injuries in Xining city.
- Student
- Injury
- Intervention