Child fatal injury rate down, but race gap up

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Young children may be less likely to suffer fatal injuries than they were two decades ago but young blacks and American Indians are twice as likely as whites of dying in accidents, a U.S. study said on Monday.

A steady improvement in the rate of unintentional fatal injuries among children up to age 4 among all racial groups -- a roughly 80 percent drop since the 1980s -- was credited to more extensive use of safety measures such as car seats, smoke detectors and childproof caps on medicines and household products, the study said.

However, there was a "troubling trend showing increases in recent poisoning deaths in Hispanic and black children," lead study author Joyce Pressley wrote in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Safety improvements, which included better hospital care of accident victims, likely have been implemented unevenly as well, she said. For instance, there has been a sharper decline in death rates among white children since the 1980s in such categories as motor vehicle accidents and drownings.

Overall, nearly 18 per 100,000 young children died from injuries in 2003, the latest year for which government data was available, the study said.

American Indian and Alaskan native children had the highest rates of death from injury at a combined 37 per 100,000, compared to blacks at 30 per 100,000 and whites at 16 per 100,000, it said.

The researchers from Columbia University in New York examined U.S. statistics on unintentional and intentional injuries from vehicular crashes, drownings, fires, suffocation, poisoning, falls, and gunfire that caused 3,524 deaths among nearly 20 million young children between 1981 and 2003. More than five out of six deaths were classified as unintentional.

The rate of fatal injuries among young children inflicted intentionally by another person remained steady since the 1980s, resulting in the deaths of roughly nine per 100,000 young blacks compared to three per 100,000 whites.

Death by suffocation was the sole category where the death rate increased over the study period in all racial groups, although the study did not offer reasons.

Suffocation was the leading cause of fatal injuries in 2003 at 22 percent of the deaths, while motor vehicle accidents accounted for 18 percent, drownings 15 percent, fire 7 percent, and poisonings, falls and firearms each roughly 2 percent.

Of the 56 firearm deaths examined, 83 percent occurred among minorities and half of those killed young black children, the study said. Overall, firearm deaths among young children declined by more than 90 percent over the study period.

Pressley called for targeting high-risk populations with injury-prevention counseling and urged nonsmoking campaigns to deter fires and burns.