[Schoolchildren and accidents]

POINT OF DEPARTURE: The accident rate in the population, especially injuries to children and youths are in the forefront of attention in all the industrialised countries. The reason is that accidents are the main cause of all deaths in children of over one year of age and in adolescents and accident-linked morbidity in children is second only to diseases of the respiratory tract. The aim of the study was to obtain more exact data than those that were available in the Czech Republic previously and to create conditions for a draft of preventive measures that would bring rapid and effective results.

The accident rate in children has been followed up in all age groups attending elementary school. The basic series was comprised of 190,396 children 6.0 to 15.11 years old. An accident was registered in 31,094 pupils. Registered were all accidents by the children in the course of one calendar year and had been treated by a physician. There has been found a statistically highly significant greater total accident rate in boys (18.63%) than in girls (13.92%) by the chi-square test P = 0,00000. The most frequent of injuries were fractures, dislocation of joints (55.5%) with girls being affected more frequently than boys. Most frequently the accidents took place at school (25.6%) and at home (22.6%). The greatest number of accidents took place during games and unorganised sports (30.2%) and during physical education and organised sports and school trips (29.0%). A relatively large number of injuries was sustained in conflicts with a schoolmate (8.3%).

Much greater attention should be devoted to the prevention of injuries in children, namely at home and at school, because it is not only a health problem that is in question, but also a social and economic one. Abroad, annual losses are estimated at thousands of millions of USD.