[Accidents and children]. / Urazy a deti.

BACKGROUND: The accident rate in the population, especially injuries to children and youths are in the forefront of attention in all the industrialized 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. METHODS AND RESULTS: The accident rate in children has been followed up in all age groups attending elementary school. The basic series was comprised of 192,832 children 6.0 to 15.11 years old. An accident was registered in 31 550 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 (18.7%) than in girls (13.9%) by the chi-square test P = 0.00001 at P < 0.05. The most frequent of injuries were fractures, dislocation of joints (55.2%) with girls being affected more frequently than boys. Most frequently the accidents took place at school (25.0%) and at home (21.5%). The greatest number of accidents took place during physical education and organized sports (29.4%) and during games unorganized sports (28.6%). A relatively large number of injuries was sustained in conflicts with a schoolmate (7.4%). CONCLUSION: 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.

[Outdoor camp schools from the aspect of mental hygiene]. / Skoly v prírode z mentálne hygienického hlediska.

A survey by means of questionnaires revealed a positive attitude of parents and teachers to outdoor schools of children from nursery and primary schools. While parents prefer three-week stays, teachers are definitely in favour of two-week stays. As far as the subjective experience of children is concerned, analysis of the answers of a total of 1200 primary school children (answers classified by sex, age and period of outdoor school) proved the primary correlation with age and thus also with the level of adaptation mechanisms. The position is most pretentious for pupils of the first and second form of primary schools who must overcome two types of new stresses: separation from parents and demands of the teaching process. Boys are at greater risk than girls as their risk of psychic subdeprivation is greater than in girls. Special care must be devoted maladjusted who in the teachers opinion account for 4% of primary school children and 1.7% nursery school children.