Incidence and Risk Factor of Unintentional Fall Related Injuries Among Children in Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Injuries are a major global public health problem. There are very few community-based studies on childhood injury from India in this study, we identified the distribution and risk factors for fall-related child injuries in the Chengalpattu district, Tamil Nādu community. Methodology: A descriptive analysis was done among 710 children of age up to 14 years residing in the Kat-tankulathur region in Tamil Nādu. The appropriate number of samples were recruited using the cluster sam-pling method by dividing the subjects into separate clusters and from each cluster 40 samples were obtained. The information on fall-related injury was collected according to mechanism of ‘injury’ Results: The annual incidence of fall-related injuries was 9.1 %. About 72.3% of children had injuries at home and 36% of the persons had fractures in the upper limb. 42% of children had disability in their hands. The age, gender, education and type of family was significant to injury. Conclusion:Our study reported a higher incidence of Fall injuries in Tamil Nādu when compared other stud-ies done in India. Male children are the most common victims of injury and also identified homes, roads/streets as the most common places for the occurrences of fall injury in children.