OCR Text |
Show Accidents Kill More Than Many Diseases Accidents kill twice as many pre-school children as pneumonia, pneu-monia, and nearly three times as many as cancer, it is reported by statisticians of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Currently, fatal accidents in the United States take a toll each year of about 4700 children past their infancy but not yet of school age. These deaths account for more than one fourth of the total at ages 1-4. This situation nevertheless represents a substantial sub-stantial improvement over that of a few years ago. Between 1949 and 1957, the death rate from a'cidents at ages 1-4 in the United States declined from 38 to 31 per 100,000. Boys had the more rapid decline, the reduction amounting to, 22 per 'cent, compared to 13 per cent for girls. However, the ,1957 accident ac-cident mortality, . rate for boys was about a fourth higher than for girls in this age group. Motor vehicles account for 31 per cent of the accidental deaths among children in the 1-4 age group. Most of these accidents involve children "run over or hit by cars on streets and highdays. Relatively few, of the children are passengers in cars. Fires and explosions rank second, sec-ond, accounting for 20 percent of the accidental burns. Most of the victims are asphyxiated or burned to death in their homes, sometimes when left without a responsible older person as supervisor. su-pervisor. Other major causes of accidental acci-dental deaths among preschool children are drownings, most of them in or near the home; poisonings poi-sonings by liquids or solids, particularly par-ticularly among children one and two years of age; falls; burns caused by scalds from hot liquids steam and other hot substances, and choking on food and miscellaneous miscel-laneous objects. "The primary responsibility for the control of mishaps among preschool children, rests upon their parents. They must provide good ( supervision, remove hazards, haz-ards, teach simple safety measures, meas-ures, and set good examples at all times. . However, physicians, especially pediatricians are making mak-ing major contributions and by promoting community programs for child safety." |