HYDERABAD: Parents/elders need to ensure that while travelling with children on two-wheelers, the youngsters are adequately protected and wear helmet as injuries on two-wheelers is a major reason behind many children aged under 14 ending up at trauma care centres in hospitals.
The GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) published a study recently in which it analysed 9,517 calls received from people across Telangana and Andhra, over a span of one year, of children aged under 14 years are under trauma at its emergency response centre in Hyderabad. It was found that 7,116 calls were due to vehicular injury.
From Telangana, 3,796 were related to vehicular trauma, of which 2,985 calls were related to two-wheeler injuries. From Andhra, 3,320 calls were vehicular injury cases, of which, 2,620 were two-wheeler injuries.
Non-vehicular trauma
Of the 9,517 calls, 2,401 calls were of children injured in non-vehicular incidents. The main reasons for injuries were skidding, accounting for 1,278 calls, followed by falling down from height (659), electrocution (230), crush injuries (55) and near drowning ( 46)
Fatalities, timing and area
The study found that highest number of trauma calls were received in May and July, whereas in a week maximum number of calls were received on Sundays. On a daily basis, most of the calls were received between 3pm-7pm. Of all districts (erstwhile names) in Telangana, maximum calls were received from Rangareddy(905) followed by Hyderabad(523) and KaXrimnagar(441). In AP, they were Chittoor (631) followed by Visakhapatnam (599) and Krishna (566).
The GVK EMRI study reported that in 2,156 cases, the children died before EMRI ambulance could reach the spot and that up to 80 per cent of childhood injuries can be prevented by application of simple strategies.
One essential way is to ensure that children wear helmets, while riding on bikes with adults or while riding bicycles themselves. As per a United Nations study, wearing of helmets increases survival rate by 42 per cent. It should be ensured that children are not allowed to ride motorcycles until they reach the legal age. Adults should equip themselves with first aid training in case of accidents.
The study reported that the average time for 108 ambulance arrival is 15 minutes and in this time, applying the right first aid measures can be life saving. Also parents should prefer calling an ambulance rather than taking injured children in autos or personal vehicles.
Setting up Emergency Stabilisation Centres
The study has raised a demand of establishing Emergency Stabilisation Centres which will have essential medical equipment like advanced airway, spinal motion restriction device and haemorrhage control and will have a trained paramedic over an area of 1,100 square feet. These centres will help in providing road crash and other trauma victims critical care closer to the incident location.
The set up will just cost `25 lakh. It said that GVK EMRI has the ability to identify accident hotspots which can be utilised to establish the ESCs. Two such centres are already established in Chennai which help in stabilising around 12 critical trauma cases everyday.