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Business partners and their commitment to child safety:
Johnson and Johnson - Europe, Middle East and Africa
Children’s health is a natural area of focus for Johnson and Johnson - Europe, Middle East and Africa with interests in baby-care products and first aid as well as pharmaceuticals and surgical equipment.
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Helping children, and their families, cope with illness can have a great impact on children, on their families and on society as a whole. Equally, reducing the severity and frequency of accidents among children is an important priority. Accidents are a particular hazard in early life as inexperience combines with exuberance. They are the leading cause of childhood death. Through its corporate and decentralised structure, Johnson and Johnson is able to support initiatives at both European and national levels.
At the European level, Johnson and Johnson - Europe, Middle East and Africa partnered with the European Consumer and Safety Association’s Child Safety Alliance and provided valuable support to the Alliance, i.e. we try to help the Alliance to increase diversity, enhance strategic thinking and to broaden the approach.
At the same time but at the national level, Johnson and Johnson - Europe, Middle East and Africa support many of the associated child safety organisations. In Greece, for example, the Centre for Research and Prevention of Injuries among the Young at Athens University Medical School has a project supported by Janssen-Cilag Greece to develop an information campaign on the risks and prevention of childhood drowning.
This partnership is very valuable for our company but more particularly for the children themselves. Disabilities from childhood accident may present such a life burden that reducing the number of accidents will bring lifetime benefits throughout the region. The European Child Safety Alliance did and is still doing a great job to increase public awareness of child accidents and the opportunity to reduce them and make specific recommendations to the European Parliament, the European Commission and Member States.
Johnson and Johnson - Europe, Middle East and Africa
RAM
RAM Consulting is world's leading safety consultancy company. That position reflects the success in ensuring the safety of client’s products and the integrity of their corporate image and brand.
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RAM’s multidisciplinary approach to safety involves world’s foremost authorities, and is recognised as the standard by many in the medical research community and principal regulatory agencies.
RAM works with companies to make product safety integral to every level of their business process from design and engineering through manufacture and distribution. RAM enables safety through research pursing insight into the relationship between product characteristics and people.
RAM develops processes that ensure that products for clients are designed for safety. Whilst technology and research are the foundation of these processes, it is only through ongoing partnership with clients that we succeed in preventing injuries and saving lives.
RAM Consulting, Oak Brook USA, Luton, England
Consumer Safety Institute
The Consumer Safety Institute (CSI), established in 1983, is an agency with a mission to improve the safety of consumers and cut the toll of home and leisure injuries in the Netherlands.
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Project partners and their commitment to child safety
European Commission
The mission of the EU “Health and Consumer Protection” is to implement the responsibilities entrusted to it by the Treaty and derived legislation so as to ensure that a high level of human health and consumer protection is attained throughout the EU.
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World health Organisation
Injuries - an environmental health threat for children
Injuries are a major threat to children’s health with a strong environmental component. Globally, the WHO recognises accidents and injuries such as drowning, burns, traffic accidents and poisoning to be among the most important environmental causes of death and disability for children world-wide.
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According to the Global Burden of Disease estimates, this burden will further increase over the next decades. In the European Region there is an enormous variation in rates of injuries across countries, with a huge gap between east and west. Highest rates were found in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, where mortality exceeds by more than eight times the rates reported by best performing countries in Western Europe. Out of 10 child deaths, 3 to 4 occur as a consequence of injury. The effects of injuries go beyond the already dramatic burden of death and disability. The fear of accidents can influence life-styles, and have in turn indirect negative effects on children’s health. For example, the freedom of children to meet their mobility needs by walking or cycling is being restricted by parents out of fears of traffic accidents. As a result, children are more sedentary, and their risk of becoming overweight or obese, and/or of developing serious diseases such as diabetes increases dramatically.
The major concerns posed by injuries need to be addressed using a broad range of tools, which include effective implementation of appropriate policies and regulations to improve safety standards, measures to raise awareness and promote safer behaviours of families, caretakers, teachers and children, and measures to introduce structural changes in the environment and in sectoral policies. Where needed, this may require re-designing and re-thinking these as a function of the needs of children and of their specific vulnerabilities. For example, strategies to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries should include structural changes in infrastructures, driving behaviour and speeds that do take into account the slow reaction time, reduced vision and ability to judge speeds, and low conspicuity of children, along with their unpredictable behaviour. Furthermore, the responsibility for injury prevention in children should be seen as a shared one, where relevant sectors of the economy, and different departments of administrations are accountable for children’s safety, along with parents and educators. While this is already happening in some sectors of the economy, the same approach needs to be further expanded.
The protection of children from environmental health threats is based on international agreements designed to ensure that children grow up and live in an environment that is conducive to the highest attainable level of health. The Declaration of the III. European Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health held in June 1999, identifies the implementation of public health interventions to reduce accidents and injuries as one of the four priority areas to protect children’s environmental health. In addition, the 4th Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, which took place in Budapest in 2004, focused on “The Future For Our Children”, providing another important political platform at the pan-European level to promote action, including aspects related to children’s safety. Accordingly, WHO is engaged in setting the prevention of injuries in childhood high on the policy agenda, and in promoting inter-sectoral action, as exemplified by the approach taken in the field of Transport, Health and Environment. To build awareness, assess and monitor progress throughout the European Region a core set of environmental indicators is being developed by WHO in collaboration with other international agencies. Mortality and morbidity rates due to road accidents, burns, falls and poisoning and drowning are among the proposed indicators. A combined indicator assessing the policy implementation has been proposed. Rates will have to be analysed further by socio-economical status and geographical area to identify high-risk groups and to stress the need for focused policies and interventions.
WHO Regional Office for Europe, European Center for Environment and Health, Rome, Italy
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