Epidemiology of Injuries in Kashmir - A Population based Cross Sectional Study

Background: More than 5 million people die each year as a result of injuries. This accounts for 9% of the world’s deaths, nearly 1.7 times the number of fatalities that result from HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Despite growing awareness of the magnitude of the problem, attention to injury and violence prevention and control among policymakers and those funding global public health programming remains disproportionately low. This kind of study was conducted first time in Indian side of Kashmir. Even the World Health Organization has no data on prevalence of injuries in Jammu & Kashmir. Aims & Objectives: 1. To determine the prevalence of injuries among Kashmiri population in district Srinagar. 2. To find out the pattern of injuries in the study population. 3. To identify various risk factors associated with injuries. Methods: 655 participants were interviewed in this Community based cross sectional study conducted in Srinagar-the capital city of Jammu & Kashmir state from 1st April 2015- 30th September 2016 using a two stage cluster random sampling method. Results: 19.7% of participants suffered from injuries in the past 1 year. Among the injured 29% suffered from major injuries and 71% from minor injuries. Majority (82.3%) of the injuries were unintentional. Depending on the mechanism of injuries-the most common type were Road traffic accidents (20.9%) followed by Falls (17.8%) and stuck/hit by an object or person (17.8%) and violence (12.9%). The most common place where injuries occurred were at home (46.51%). 15% of injured suffered from a disability. Not a single victim commuted using an ambulance to the hospital from the site of injury. Conclusion: Considerable proportion of those injured, were disabled temporarily for some time which affected their productivity and also became a socioeconomic burden on the society as a whole.