Résumé
A community-based survey was conducted in a rural area in Ismailia to find out the prevalence, etiology, the outcome and burden of injuries. In addition whether the surveyed area was considered a safe community or not was investigated. This survey is a part of a Multicentre hospital-based and community-based International Clinical Epidemiology Network [INCLEN] injury cluster study conducted in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Egypt.All households were visited with listing all individuals in each household using a specific form. The participants were the individuals who had injuries in the last 6 months. A questionnaire composed of two parts was used to collect data about the household characteristics, some of the inhabitants' characteristics like age, gender type, alcohol and substance abuse and their perception of their community regarding safety. The second part of the questionnaire included the details of the injury event, type, cause, outcome, time and place of occurrence, who intervene and the burden of injury event on the individual and family.The number of the surveyed households was 1951 and the number of the inhabitants was 9920, 52.7% of them were males. Two thousands and 155 injury events were reported with a mean age in years 25.4 +/- 17.1. Unintentional injuries represented 98.4% of the injury events. The injury events [n=2155] ended by death [1.5%], disability [11.5%] and by recovery [87%]. Injury events among males represented 52.7% of the injury events. Home was the place of injury events in 52.4 percent. The police case was opened in 3.3% of the injury events. A bystander was the one who helped the injured persons in case of 42.8% of the events. Traffic injuries, fall, burn, cut/stab wounds, gunshot, blunt injury, poisoning, drowning and animal bite represented 11%, 26.3%; 10.8%, 38.9%, 0.3%, 7.0%, 2.2%, 0.1%, and 2.4% respectively out of the 2155 injury events. The family needed to borrow money to take care of the injured persons in 6.6% of the injury events. There was a statistically significant relationship between borrowing money by the family and the outcome of injury events [X[2]=346.3, p<0.05]. Among the respondents [n=1951], 98.6%, 83.2%, 92.4% and 97.2% felt safe on walking during the day, night, planned to stay in the surveyed area, and had deep feelings of commitments to their neighbors respectively. In the surveyed area blunt injuries and fall related injuries were the most frequent causes of injuries in the surveyed area. Males were more prone to all causes of injuries except burn and cut/ stab wounds than females. The surveyed community was perceived as a safe community by most of the respondents. Involvement of people at all levels is needed to solve the injury problem