Unintentional Child Injury in Rural and Urban Siddlagatta, Karnataka, India: A Community-Based Survey.

INTRODUCTION: Despite Indian children constituting approximately 31.4% of the population aged 0 to 14, a comprehensive exploration of childhood injuries within this demographic remains limited. This study aimed to examine the occurrence of unintentional injuries among children aged six months to 18 years in the Siddlagatta area and assess associated risk factors. METHODOLOGY: A community-based, cross-sectional study on unintentional child injuries was carried out from March 2018 to September 2020 across 11 sites in India. Employing a two-stage cluster sampling method with probability proportionate to size, 2341 urban and rural families were selected from each site. Data on unintentional injuries sustained over the past 12 months were collected using the WHO child injury questionnaire, tailored and validated for the Indian context. RESULTS: The study encompassed 10,335 individuals in households, including 2695 children aged 6 months to 18 years. Among them, 309 children experienced 390 unintentional injuries in the preceding year, excluding minor incidents. A prevalence rate of 11.5% (95% CI: 10.3-12.7) was identified for unintentional injuries among children, excluding minor cases. Falls were the most prevalent injury type (183 cases, 53.8%), while poisoning incidents were the least frequent (one case, 0.2%). More than 50% of incidents occurred within domestic settings. CONCLUSIONS: This study's outcomes underscore the prominence of fall-related injuries across all age groups and genders. Homes and schools emerged as primary settings for these injuries, highlighting the need for targeted preventive measures.

Disparities in pulmonary function in healthy children across the Indian urban-rural continuum.

RATIONALE: Marked socioeconomic health-care disparities are recognized in India, but lung health inequalities between urban and rural children have not been studied. OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether differences exist in spirometric pulmonary function in healthy children across the Indian urban-rural continuum and compared results with those from Indian children living in the UK. METHODS: Indian children aged 5 to 12 years were recruited from Indian urban, semiurban, and rural schools, and as part of the Size and Lung Function in Children study, London. Anthropometric and spirometric assessments were undertaken. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Acceptable spirometric data were obtained from 728 (58% boys) children in India and 311 (50% boys) UK-Indian children. As an entire group, the India-resident children had significantly lower z FEV1 and z FVC than UK-Indian children (P < 0.0005), when expressed using Global Lung Function Initiative-2012 equations. However, when India-resident children were categorized according to residence, there were no differences in z FEV1 and z FVC between Indian-urban and UK-Indian children. There were, however, significant reductions of ∼ 0.5 z scores and 0.9 z scores in both FEV1 and FVC (with no difference in FEV1/FVC) in Indian-semiurban and Indian-rural children, respectively, when compared with Indian-urban children (P < 0.0005). z Body mass index, socioeconomic circumstances, tobacco, and biomass exposure were individually significantly associated with z FEV1 and z FVC (P < 0.0005). CONCLUSIONS: The presence of an urban-rural continuum of lung function within a specific ethnic group emphasizes the impact of environmental factors on lung growth in emerging nations such as India, which must be taken into account when developing ethnic-specific reference values or designing studies to optimize lung health.