RoSPA Press Office : Press Release

July 7, 2006
SCOTLAND AND RoSPA HELP EUROPE FIGHT CHILD ACCIDENTS

Scotland and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents have played a vital part in producing a new guide to help to keep children safe throughout Europe.

The "Child Safety Good Practice Guide; Good Investments in Unintentional Child Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion" has been published to help countries select the correct strategies to reduce accidents.

Designed for use throughout Europe, the guide was drawn up by members of the European Child Safety Action Plan. Elizabeth Lumsden of RoSPA has led the project to produce Scotland’s own Child Safety Action Plan .

This has built on existing work on child accident prevention in Scotland and has included a nationwide consultation exercise with policy-makers and practitioners to ensure a co-ordinated approach to child injury prevention.

Elizabeth Lumsden said: "The guide will assist those with a remit for child safety to move away from what has 'always been done' and move toward good investments - strategies that are known to work or have the greatest probability of success.

“I am delighted that there are Scottish examples, such as the road safety initiative, Kerbcraft, included in the guide. We can reduce injury, deaths and disability through a combined approach of education, engineering and enforcement. Injury is predictable and preventable."

Injury is the number one cause of death for children in every member state in Europe, not cancer, not respiratory or heart illnesses, or meningitis.

Children in low and middle income countries are at four times the risk of dying from injuries as children in high income countries within Europe, with a ten-fold difference between countries with the highest and lowest injury death rates. If all countries in Europe had the same child injury death rate as Sweden (3.6 per 100,000), over 15,000 child deaths could be prevented.

Elizabeth Lumsden said: “The UK has one of the lowest child injury death rates in Europe – very close to Sweden’s - and it is hoped other countries will learn from us. But there is still a lot we can learn from the other nations involved in this work.”

The guide can be found at:
http://www.eurosafe.eu.com/csi/eurosafe2006.nsf/wwwVwContent/l4goodpracticeguide-gpg.htm