One in six Irish children visit a hospital casualty department, and there are 15,000 hospital admissions, a conference on injury prevention was told yesterday.
Dr Alf Nicholson, consultant paediatrician at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, said if a disease was killing children in the same proportion that accidents were, people would demand that something be done. "The rate of death from injury is 10 times that of death from meningitis."
An international injuries expert, Prof Barry Pless of McGill University in Canada, said it was "nothing short of scandalous" that in Ireland and some other countries there was so much information on accident prevention but nothing was being done with it.
"There is an urgent need for action. I believe that regulation or legislation with enforcement is the fastest way to achieve success," he said at the conference organised by the Office for Health Gain.
Dr Nicholson said a policy on preventing accidents was needed immediately. The main injuries related to falls, road-related injury, accidental poisoning, burns and scalds, house fires, drowning and farm injuries. "What we need most in Ireland is someone to fund a centre of expertise where people can share ideas. When we talk about injuries we are not talking about statistics but about people." Prof Pless said some accident prevention measures could be taken fairly easily, such as speed cameras, police enforcement and better roads to prevent road accidents, strapping children into safety seats in cars, wearing bicycle helmets, using stair and window guards.