Incidence, patterns and severity of reported unintentional injuries in Pakistan for persons five years and older: results of the National Health Survey of Pakistan 1990–94

National Health Survey of Pakistan (NHSP 1990–94) is a nationally representative survey of the household. Through a two-stage stratified design, 18, 315 persons over 5 years of age were interviewed to estimate the overall annual incidence, patterns and severity of unintentional injuries for males and females in urban and rural areas over the preceding one year. Weighted estimates were computed adjusting for complex survey design using surveyfreq and surveylogistic option of SAS 9.1 software.The overall annual incidence of all unintentional injuries was 45.9 (CI: 39.3–52.5) per 1000 per year; 59.2 (CI: 49.2–69.2) and 33.2 (CI: 27.0–39.4) per 1000 per year among males and females over five years of age, respectively. An estimated 6.16 million unintentional injuries occur in Pakistan annually among persons over five years of age. Urban and rural injuries were 55.9 (95% CI: 48.1–63.7) and 41.2 (95% CI: 32.2–50.0) per 1000 per year, respectively. The annual incidence of injuries due to falls were 22.2 (95% CI: 18.0–26.4), poisoning 3.3 (95%CI: 0.5–6.1) and burn was 1.5 (95%CI: 0.9–2.1) per 1000 per year. The majority of injuries occurred at home 19.2 (95%CI: 16.0–22.4) or on the roads 17.0 (95%CI: 13.8–20.2). Road traffic/street, school and urban injuries were more likely to result in handicap.There is high burden of unintentional injuries among persons over five years of age in Pakistan. These results are useful to plan further studies and prioritizing prevention programs on injuries nationally and other developing countries with similar situation.Unintentional injuries are the main cause of injury deaths worldwide [1-3]. More than two-thirds of injuries occur in developing countries [4,5]. Deaths from injuries are projected to increase from 5.1 million to 8.4 million (9.2% of all global deaths) and injuries are estimated to be the third leading cause of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) by the year 2020 [6,7].Despite the high burden developing countries have just