Abstract

Background: More than 5 million people die every year as a result of injuries due to accidents or violence. This represents 9% of the world's deaths, nearly 1.7 times the number of deaths from HIV / AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Regardless of increasing awareness of the scale of the problem, interest in preventing and combating injury and violence among policymakers and those who fund global public health programs remains excessively low. Our study was conducted for the first time in Yemen. Even the Ministry of Health and Population, no WHO has data on the prevalence of injuries among schoolchildren or children and adults in Yemen.

Objectives: The first aim of this study was to provide training of first aid in schools and community, and created of awareness on school children injuries due to violence and accidents in Sana’a city. Determining the prevalence of injuries among representatives of school children in the city of Sana'a. To know the pattern of injuries in the study population. Identify the different factors associated with injuries in order to contribute to developing prevention measures and health promotion in this group.

Methods: The first part of the study including: First aid training and provision of service material, extension of awareness activities to homes of students, child to child education, and Extension awareness to policy makers; include letters recommendation to include prevention of accidents and violence in the curriculum such as special training on crossing the roads, respect of traffic signals etc Were done. Then survey was done in which 3,382 pupils were interviewed in this school-based cross-sectional study conducted in selected schools in Sana'a City from 1 October 2006 to 1 April 2007 using the two-stage cluster sampling method.

Results: 56% of participants suffered from injuries in the past 1 year. Among the injured depending on the mechanism of injuries: the most common type were 35% suffered from traffic injuries, followed by 26% suffered from fall injuries, 17% suffered from fighting and 9% suffered from burn injuries. The most common place where injuries occurred were at street (45%), followed by at home (30%) and school (16%). Total of 977 victims were followed for long term outcome; 50% of them had simple impact, 41% cured, 7% disability and 1% death.

Conclusion: A large proportion of the affected, were temporarily disabled for some time which affected their productivity and also became a social and economic burden on society as a whole. Fostering healthy peer relationships may help reduce injuries in this age group as well as reduce the harmful effects of violence.