Dr. M.M. Zameer
Consultant Pediatric Laparoscopic and Robotic Surgeon
Every year we (Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons) celebrate the pediatric surgery week. The theme for this year is
“Pediatric Surgeons-Partnering Care Givers for Child Safety”
With this initiative we would like to make all the caregivers of children aware about the potential dangers to children in our surroundings and how to avoid them. Thus preventing many of the accidents before they happen and keeping our precious little ones safe.
Statistics prove that accidents in children is much more than generally imagined and many of these accidents are fatal. More than 7 lakh children die every year worldwide from unintentional injuries. More than 2000 children die every day from road traffic accidents / drowning / burns / poisoning.
About 75 – 90 % of all these accidents can be avoided. Hence we need to look into child safety more closely.
Children love to explore things around them. Toddlers especially explore things by touching them, holding them and tasting them. That’s the reason children keep anything around that comes into their reach, into their mouths. They put small things like coins, button batteries, safety pins, small parts of toys into their mouths leading to major health issues.
Also they are very easily distractible, leading to accidents.
Burns : mostly scalds from fall of hot boiling water / tea / coffee on them .
Choking : from small objects (peanut is the most common object leading to choking) like peanuts , nuts ,small parts of toys, button batteries, coins
Poisoning : esp from liquids (sanitisers , cleaning liquids, spirit)
To conclude I would like to say that we need to be aware of all these potential dangers. We have to be the role models for our children for safe behaviour. Remember, prevention is always better.