Situation of child injuries in Vietnam and interventions

Background Injury is one of the leading causes of death in children in the world as well as in Vietnam. Deaths-related-injury accounts for nearly 40% of all deaths in children Objective and Method Objective is to assess child injury situation in Vietnam and recommend some interventions. Results Every year Viet Nam has 334 471 cases of child injury. Of which, deaths are 7187. The overall mortality rate among children and adolescent is 23.15 per 100 000 children. The percentage of children deaths due to injury accounts for 19.63% the total mortality rate of the whole country. Children were at high risk of drowning. Specifically, those of group age 0–4 were predominant with the average rate of 22/100 000 children per year. Road traffic injury was the second leading cause of death with 1867 cases in average per year. It accounted for approximately 24–26% of the total injured children. Vietnam has developed the Nation plan on child injury prevention period 2011–2015 focusing on IEC activities on risk factors of child injury, surveillance system, pre-hospital trauma care and safe community development for children. Significance The research described a great number of relatively comprehensive results on child injury in Vietnam. Development of policy to reduce injury deaths requires appropriate interventional measures such as the national injury prevention plan, trauma care system or sentinel surveillance systems on determination of risk factors of injury in the community.