Accidental deaths of children, teens down 30%, CDC says
Decline from 2000 to 2009 mostly because of a drop in traffic deaths. Still, more than 9,000 young people die unintentionally each year.
The number of children and teens who die from any kind of accidents has dropped nearly 30% from 2000 to 2009, mostly because of a decline in traffic deaths, says a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The good news — that more than 11,000 lives have been saved by the reductions in unintentional deaths for those from birth to age 19 over that period — is offset by the sobering news that more than 9,000 young people still die annually from motor-vehicle-related accidents, fires, poisoning, drowning, falls and other unintentional injuries.
Unintentional injuries are still the leading cause of death in the United States for children ages 1 to 19 and the fifth-leading cause of death for newborns, the report says.
“Most of these events are predictable and preventable,” said Ileana Arias, principal deputy director at the CDC. “One child’s death is one death too many.”
A large part of the decline in unintentional deaths was a 41% drop in childhood vehicle-related crash deaths between 2000 and 2009, although they still remain the leading cause of unintentional injury death.
Among the reasons for the decline: improvements in child safety and booster seat use and use of graduated drivers’ licensing systems for teen drivers, Arias said.
There are still “troubling trends,” she said. Poisoning death rates climbed 91% among teens ages 15-19, largely because of overdoses on prescription drugs such as painkillers.
One puzzling finding was a 54% rise in deaths from suffocation among babies younger than 1.
The deaths from suffocation is “a troubling number,” said Julie Gilchrist, a pediatrician and medical epidemiologist with CDC’S Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention. Part of the increase may be because of improved deathscene investigation and classification.
Previously a suffocation death might have been classified as sudden infant death syndrome, she says. SIDS is not included in the study — it’s a diagnosis issued when there isn’t an explanation for how a child died, Gilchrist says.
“Whether it’s a new increase or whether it’s the way it has been — it’s still almost a thousand infants in a year who are suffocating in their beds in environments that we know aren’t safe,” she said.
She says many infant deaths from both SIDS and suffocation could be avoided if parents followed the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendations: Infants should sleep in safe cribs, alone, on their backs, with no loose bedding or soft toys.
In 2009, child and adolescent unintentional injuries resulted in about 9,000 deaths, 225,000 hospitalizations and 8.4 million patients treated and released from emergency departments. State death rates varied widely: Mississippi’s was more than six times that of Massachusetts.
Unintentional injuries among children in 2005 that resulted in death, hospitalization or an emergency department visit cost nearly $11.5 billion in medical expenses.