Abstract:
Introduction; It is an established fact that accidental injuries are the commonest cause of mortality and morbidity in children in developed countries. To a lesser extent, injury is probably also important in developing countries. Since developing countries including Ethiopia are preoccupied with infectious diseases, little research and resource is devoted to the investigation of childhood injuries. As a result, very little is known about the magnitude, patterns and impact of accidents and injuries in general. The few available data collected from hospitals and analyzed at the national level may not represent the real situation in the country. Only 40-50% of the total population is thought to have access to medical services and the utilization, particularly of hospitals, is highly biased. We looked into childhood injuries in eleven rural peasant associations and two urban dwellers associations in Adamitulu district, South Shoa region, Ethiopia, with a population of about 157,000. Parents in selected households were interviewed for the occurrence of recognizable intentional and/or unintentional injuries to their children during the past two months. Certain background demographic and socio-environmental variables were registered, such as: age, sex of the child, site of injury, body part injured, family size and type, occupation and education of household head and mother, mothers' age, crowding index, etc. The study aims to look at the frequency distribution of injury in its different aspects and tries to come up with factors that can predict injury risk to children in a community. We hope this study will be useful as a basis for future in-depth studies and as a source of data for health planning and prevention programs in the district and elsewhere.