A picture of Australia’s children

To the Editor: I am prompted to write to you in response to a recent MJA editorial.1 It amazes me that the health sector in Australia, as I think the editorial did, continues to largely ignore the magnitude of the problem of injury in our children. This is despite clear evidence of the excess ill-health burden that injury places on our children, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report (the subject of the editorial)2 and other reports.3-5

Having said this, the editorial did highlight a very pleasing trend — there has been a steady decline in injury deaths in later childhood. Unfortunately, however, this was the only mention of injury in the editorial, and readers could be forgiven for thinking that this is the end of the story: the injury death rate is declining; therefore, we are doing all we can, and injuries are not a major issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our children continue to die from road and drowning accidents and will do so until injury prevention is recognised as paramount.

The AIHW report clearly states that the single highest cause of death in children remains injury and poisoning.2 Accordingly, trauma is the single highest contributor to premature mortality and years of potential life lost of any health condition in Australia. If we don’t develop new approaches to reducing the incidence of drownings and road deaths, in particular, we will not see further declines in injury-related death rates, and injury will continue to rate highly as a killer of young people.

Importantly, injuries do not only kill young people — they also hospitalise and maim them. The second most common reason for hospitalisation in Australian children is injury.2 Unlike injury deaths, there has been no trend in the rate of hospitalisation for injury. Across age groups, there appears to be a shift from fatalities to an increasing number of people with a high lifetime burden of significant disability, including brain and spinal cord damage. Imagine what this does to the quality of life and life expectancy of a child. How many of these children will be able to lead physically active lives?

It is time for the health sector, particularly public health agencies, to properly recognise injury as a critical issue for the ongoing health of Australian children and to formally commit to appropriate preventive actions, commensurate with the priority ranking of childhood injuries.