An excellent new report on childhood injury has been published by WHO and Unicef. Key findings - road crashes are the single largest cause of injury death (more than a fifth of the total) for children and young people under 19, with 262,000 deaths estimated in 2004. The report http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/child/injury/world_report/en/index.html makes vital reading.
At the launch in Hanoi today the Unicef director in Vietnam made the good point that his agency and others have been concentrating so hard on infant and childhood diseases that they've largely ignored child injury - an approach he is keen to see change. That change has to come from within, and the participation from the Unicef side (WHO sent a deputy Director General and the Director of Injury Prevention) was disappointing. So top marks for producing a powerful report, but now it would be great to see the evidence having an impact on priorities.
