Abstract
Injuries are the leading cause of death among children and young adults worldwide and the third cause of death in the overall population. Given the seriousness of child injury situation, the Czech government approved the National action plan for child injury prevention for 2007 to 2017 as a systemic strategy for the prevention of both accidental and non-accidental injury in children and adolescents in the Czech Republic.
The interim report on task completion within the National action plan for child injury prevention in 2007 to 2009 indicates that the number of medically treated injuries in children aged 0-14 years decreased by 28% over the last three years. On the one hand, the positive trend in child injury incidence might be a result of the child injury prevention and awareness activities.
On the other hand, there is a legitimate suspicion that the reported trend in childhood injuries may have been biased by the changes made to the injury data collection for the database of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic and therefore, the conclusion drawn from these data may be invalid. This communication presents the updated injury data and its analysis for 2009 and 2010 in the Czech Republic.
We take advantage of the opportunity to compare and characterize the injury data from different sources and origins. We discuss the usefulness and contribution of each piece of information from the perspective of its application and determination of the valid trends in child injury incidence in the Czech Republic.