Accidents are the leading cause of death for young people in Taiwan, accounting for almost 50 percent of all youth deaths, officials at the Department of Health said yesterday.
Accidents were the second-highest cause of all deaths in Taiwan last year.
Those were the most sobering facts revealed by the health department yesterday at a press conference held to raise public awareness of safety issues, precisely because of the high rates of accidental death, particularly among children under the age of 18.
Traffic accidents were the main killer, accounting for 43 percent of all accidental deaths, taking 5,526 lives last year.
"More than 70 percent of accidents are preventable," said Huang Fu-yuan (
According to the department's statistics, 12,960 people died as a result of accidents last year. Traffic accidents, falling, drowning, suffocation, poisoning and burns were the most common accidents. Fatal accidents in which the deceased were 65 or under were mostly traffic accidents, while children mostly died from suffocation.
There were 2,347 deaths from earthquakes last year, which were included in the statistics for accidental deaths. The number of other accidental deaths was 10,613.
"More than four times as many people died from other types of accidents than died because of earthquakes," Huang said. "Most of these deaths did not result from unavoidable catastrophes and should be preventable."
For people under 24, deaths from accidents exceeded deaths from cancer, the second biggest killer in this age group, by more than five times. "It's such a waste of these young lives," Huang said.
Taiwan's rate of accidental deaths is far higher than other developed countries, except South Korea, according to the most recent report by the WHO in 1996.
"What is of most concern is that our rate of child accident mortality is consistently the highest," Huang said. "If the rate would only decrease by the tiniest margin, then I would see it as the most satisfying accomplishment of my term."
Huang, who is also a pediatrics professor, has lectured on accidents involving children for more than 20 years.
"This high mortality rate has never decreased over the past three decades, regardless of how much we have appealed to people," Huang said.
Some fatalities result from suffocation when children are left alone in cars. "The parents cry when these tragedies happen, but I have never seen any of them charged with neglect," said Chen Tzay-Jinn (陳再晉), the department's head of health promotion, who added that parents must develop a basic sense of safety.
"We [doctors] can cure many complex diseases, but we cannot reduce easily preventable accidents," said pediatrician Wu Tzu-tsung (
Many accidents involving children happen within the family. Usually parents pay particular attention to kitchens or bathrooms, which are widely considered the most dangerous places in the home, according to Huang.
"But the living room has been found to be the most dangerous place and many parents ignore the potential dangers there," he said.
Reflecting on his long years of clinical experience, Huang said, "Don't allow children to leave marbles on living room floors. Watch out for sharp angles on tables or chairs; to avoid scalding,don't let the table cloth hang over the edge of the table.
"With this simple awareness, we can reduce the infant accident rate by at least half," Huang said.
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