Pattern of childhood injuries of urban slum dwellers in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Injuries are the most important cause of morbidity and mortality for children in high income countries and are increasingly so for children in low-and middle-income countries. However, the present study has conducted to describe the socio demographic information of respondents to identify the risk of childhood injuries among the study population, to describe the causes of childhood injuries, to find out the pattern and the factors associated with injury among children of 0-18 years and to describe the nature specific injury by age. The design of the study was descriptive type of cross-sectional study. The study was conducted at slum areas of Dhaka city in Bangladesh. Non-probability Random sampling method was used for the study. Total 400 respondents were selected for the study. Data were collected from children who are age in below 18 years. Data were collected from primary sources. A pre-design questionnaire was developed to use as data collection instrument. The questionnaires were a combination of closed ended and open-ended questions. Data was collected by face-to-face interview with the respondents by the questionnaire. Collected data were analyzed by computer program. For children under the age of 18 in Bangladesh, road traffic injuries, drowning, animal bites, poisonous substances, falls, burns, and electrocutions and fire-related burns pose significant and serious risk and are a leading cause of mortality, especially in rural areas. Despite this, there is limited evidence of what works to increase children’s knowledge of injury prevention and decrease incidents of unintentional injury. So, there is an urgent need to develop programs to prevent injuries in low-income countries like Bangladesh. It is also important to reduce child injury instantly specially among 1-4 years children to achieve SDG. In the health sector existing program should be given priorities for injury prevention efforts as well as vulnerable group.