Injuries among children 0 to 19 years in Hong Kong

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Injury is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality among children in Hong Kong. The aim of this study is to contribute to the planning, implementation and evaluation of injury prevention measures in Hong Kong by providing a comprehensive comparison of injury accident and emergency department (AED) attendance rates among 18 districts. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was undertaken by using the traumatic coded AED attendance data of children aged 0 to 19 retrieved from the Hong Kong Hospital Authority database. Focusing on data of 2009, injury rates of intentional and unintentional, and the avoidable injury attendances were calculated at district level. District with the lowest overall injuryrelates AED attendance rate was taken as the reference incident rate for the calculation of excess injury rate for other districts. RESULTS: There is a great variability between the best performing and poorer performing districts in 2009, with the overall AED injury attendance rates up to three times higher in districts with poorer performance. Of all the 18 districts in Hong Kong, 7 districts have injury rates above the mean (4,716 per 100,000) and the top 3 highest overall child injury attendance rates are found in Islands, Sai Kung and Yuen Long. For intentional injury attendance rates, the top three highest are Islands, Yuen Long and Sai Kung. For unintentional injury, Islands, Sai Kung and Yuen Long reported the highest injury rates. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated a potential tool for monitoring and measuring injury trend. Districts should first aim to lower injury rates below the mean rate and subsequently work towards the lowest district reference rate. Moreover, this can also facilitate the future allocation of resources by identifying areas of strength to be built on and areas of weakness which need improvement, in particular for those newly developed districts.