%0 Journal Article
%T Unintentional Injuries among School-Aged Children in Palestine: Findings from the National Study of Palestinian Schoolchildren (HBSC-WBG2006)
%A Christine Jildeh
%A Ziad Abdeen
%A Haleama Al Sabbah
%A Anastas Philalithis
%J International Journal of Population Research
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/629159
%X Purpose. This study describes the nonfatal injuries among adolescents in Palestine. Methods. The 2006 Palestinian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) is a cross-sectional survey. Students of grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 completed a modified version of the international HBSC questionnaire, resulting in 15,963 students (47.3% boys and 52.7% girls) included in this study (56.9% from the West Bank and 43.1% from Gaza). Results. Of the total 15,963 adolescents, 47.6% were injured, with boys (53.5%) being statistically higher than girls (42.1%) ( ). The prevalence of those injured more than once decreased by age and was also found significantly higher in boys than in girls (27.3% and 17.9%, resp.) ( ). Children living in low FAS families showed significantly lower ratios of injuries than those living in moderate and high FAS families ( ). Injuries while biking were significantly higher among boys (46.3%) than girls (41.7%) ( ), and injuries while walking/running were more prevalent among girls (32.5%) than boys (28.0%) ( ). Conclusion. Despite these considerably high rates, injury remains relatively underappreciated. Results of this study are useful to develop a national injury prevention program aimed at enhancing the safety of Palestinian adolescents. 1. Introduction Injuries are the worldĄŻs leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents [1]. According to the World Health Organization report of 2008, injury is a leading cause of the global burden of disease; injuries are responsible for more than 950,000 deaths every year among those under 19 years of age, from which at least 60 percent are attributed to unintentional causes. However, the differences such as the extent, pattern, distribution, risk, and determinants between the intentional and unintentional home, school and road-related childhood, and young adulthood injury hazards are not well understood [2]. Many studies had focused on the typology of injuries and their socio-economic status correlates [3, 4] particular types of injuries, such as sport injuries [5], the association between family stress and injuries [6], risk behaviors and injuries [7], violence and injuries [4, 8], and other psychosocial determinants [4, 9, 10]. Despite the enormous public health burden imposed by child and adolescent injury, several studies had shown that 71¨C95% of injuries could be prevented by simple and reasonable means [11, 12]. In developed countries such as Australia, Sweden, Britain, and Canada, injury rates has been reduced by up to 50% over the past three decades using
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijpr/2013/629159/