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TACTICS is led by the European Child Safety Alliance (ECSA), in partnership with the European Commission and child safety leaders in over 30 countries , experts in the areas of in the areas of child injury, inequities, health indicators, benchmarking and indexing, and regional health policy analysis in addition to key international and European non-government organisations working to disseminate critical information to community stakeholders and positively influence the lives of children. The project will run from April 2011 to March 2014.
Home injuries to be prioritized within child safety plans
The European Child Safety Alliance, a EuroSafe-programme, released Child Safety Report Cards for 31 countries. The Report Cards score countries on their level of adoption, implementation and enforcement of over 100 proven strategies and policies to prevent unintentional injury – good practices known to save children’s lives. This is the third round of bi-annual report card assessments since 2007.
To date no country has adopted all the recommended safety measures. For all countries, there is ample room for improvement, particularly given the inequalities between countries with over 6 times difference in accident rates between countries with the highest and lowest rates:
- Only 13 countries (42%) have a national helmet law requiring use of a bicycle helmet while cycling, with seven of those laws coming into effect since the first report card assessments. However, only 8/13 report that the law is fully implemented and enforced.
- No country has a law requiring children to use a rear facing child passenger restraint to age 4, although this is normal practice in Sweden where child passenger deaths in this age group have been reduced to almost zero.
- Only 7 countries (23%) have a national law requiring barrier fencing for private pools, but in only one (France) is the law fully implemented and enforced and that law allows a choice of prevention measures of which barrier fencing is only one.
- Only 15 countries (48%) have a national law requiring child resistant packaging of medications and of those, three report the law is not fully implemented and enforced.
- Only 16 countries (52%) have a national law requiring environmental changes to prevent children from falling out of windows in buildings with more than one storey/level (e.g. window guards), but for over half of those the law only applies to new buildings or renovations.
Overall, countries had greater uptake of transport related policies than those related to the prevention of home injuries. As home injuries are a leading cause of child injury hospitalisations and emergency room visits, efforts to enhance the adoption, implementation and enforcement of proven policies to reduce drowning, falls, burns and scalds, poisonings and choking/strangulation need to be given the same level of commitment and resourcing as transport related policies.
Investment in child injury prevention from relevant sectors at the national and European levels still is not commensurate with the size of the problem. Therefore, ensuring children’s right to safety is key to raise the level of health, well being and growth for European children and society at large.
For more information:
Website TACTICS
Email secretariat
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