(Press-News.org) Ten years of data from Australia, New Zealand and Canada reveals a drop in drowning deaths among people under 20 - but a large increase in drowning for adolescent females and First Nations peoples.
Associate Professor Richard Franklin from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, said an international collaboration of researchers looked at drowning in the under 20s between 2005 and 2014.
"Globally, drowning is a leading cause of unintentional death among children and young people, with the greatest toll among children under the age of five years. Many more children are impacted by non-fatal drowning, some experiencing long-term health impacts," said Dr Franklin.
He said children aged 0-19 years account for an average of 16%-20% of unintentional drowning deaths reported in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
"But we found encouraging reductions in the number of drowning deaths in this age group; ?49% in Australia, ?51% in Canada and ?30% in New Zealand," said Dr Franklin.
He said this shows the value of sustained investment in research-based prevention measures, increased public awareness and education, legislation and enforcement.
"Strengthening pool fencing legislation, for instance, is an example of evidence-informed policy attributed with halving swimming pool drowning deaths among 0-4 years in one state in Australia," said Dr Franklin.
He said the study, co-authored by researchers from James Cook University, University of New South Wales and the Drowning Prevention Research Centre Canada uncovered a darker trend too.
Study author Dr Amy Peden said among 10 to 14-year-olds, there was a 48% increase in drowning recorded in Australia, and a 26.5% increase among 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand.
"This upward trend is being driven by increases in drowning among females, with a 196% increase among 10 to 14-year-old females in Australia and a 200% increase among female 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand," said Dr Peden.
Dr Franklin said First Nations children are overrepresented in drowning statistics, accounting for 16% of all drowning fatalities and were significantly overrepresented in drowning fatalities in New Zealand.
"Drowning prevention strategies for this at-risk group must consider and address social determinants, especially among young women and Indigenous people. In particular, community driven, culturally appropriate drowning prevention strategies for Maori children in New Zealand are urgently required," said Dr Franklin.
INFORMATION:
PHILADELPHIA--Patient-reported outcomes have become a critical part of improving surgical care because of their ability to capture patient experiences, such as quality of life and satisfaction, that can help inform treatment. However, for patients undergoing abdominal hernia repair -- a common procedure performed on about 400,000 patients a year in the United States -- a tool to effectively and practically measure those outcomes has not been widely accepted and implemented by clinics.
Now, researchers from the division of Plastic Surgery in the department of Surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, have successfully developed, tested, and implemented a first-of-its-kind, patient-informed ...
Osaka - Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are now very popular features of many mainstream products including smartphones and televisions. OLEDs have the advantages of being low cost, light, flexible, and easy to modify, making them ideal display materials. However, current OLEDs that achieve commercially viable quantum efficiencies contain rare metal atoms such as iridium and platinum that increase costs and reduce sustainability. Now, an international team including researchers from Osaka University has reported the best performing heavy-atom-free OLED of its kind.
Although OLEDs that do not contain heavy atoms--such as rare metals and halogens--are ...
SINGAPORE, 12 January 2021 - Researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and Columbia University in the US have solved how Wnt proteins, which play a fundamental role in cell proliferation and differentiation, hitch a ride to travel from their cellular factory to the cell surface. Drugs that interfere with Wnt transport, like the made-in-Singapore anti-cancer drug ETC-159, can be exploited to treat diseases with excess Wnt signalling, such as cancer and fibrosis.
"Since excessive Wnt signalling can drive cancer, supress immunity and trigger fibrosis, ...
Conflict between divorced or separated parents increases the risk of children developing physical and mental health problems.
A new study from the Arizona State University Research and Education Advancing Children's Health (REACH) Institute has found that children experience fear of being abandoned when their divorced or separated parents engage in conflict. Worrying about being abandoned predicted future mental health problems in children. The work will be published in Child Development on January 12.
"Conflict is a salient stressor for kids, and the link between exposure to interparental conflict ...
WASHINGTON--The Endocrine Society is calling on policymakers to include government negotiation as part of an overall strategy to reduce insulin prices in its updated position statement published today in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
More than 34 million Americans have diabetes, and another 88 million are at risk for developing the disease. The cost of insulin has nearly tripled in the past 15 years, and a lack of transparency in the drug supply chain has made it challenging to identify and address the causes of soaring costs.
Federal law currently prohibits Medicare, which accounts for a third of all drug spending, from negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Legislation empowering the ...
To properly monitor and help curb the spread of COVID-19, several millions of diagnostic tests are required daily in just the United States alone. There is still a widespread lack of COVID-19 testing in the U.S. and many of the clinical diagnostics protocols require extensive human labor and materials that could face supply shortages and present biosafety concerns.
The current gold standard for COVID-19 diagnostic testing in the U.S., developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is quantitative PCR-based (qPCR) molecular tests that detect the presence of the viral ...
Toronto (Jan. 12, 2021) - More than half the clinicians surveyed at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre reported burnout and high levels of distress according to a series of studies published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal Open (CMAJ-OPEN). In these studies carried out before the COVID-19 pandemic, 78% of nurses, 73% of allied health staff and 65% of physicians described experiencing burnout.
"In my 35 years as a physician I have never seen a more serious issue for clinicians than burnout," says lead author Dr. Barry Rubin, Chair and Medical Director, the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, ...
A new structural arrangement of atoms shows promise for developing safer batteries made with solid materials. Scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) designed a new type of 'antiperovskite' that could help efforts to replace the flammable organic electrolytes currently used in lithium ion batteries. Their findings were described in the journal Nature Communications.
Perovskite compounds are being tested and used in a wide range of technologies due to their excellent ability to conduct electricity, among other properties. They can be made from a large combination of atoms with the formula ABX3, where A and B are positively charged atoms and X is a negatively ...
Brain cells often cluster and grow together creating three-dimensional columns. While this pillar-like pattern of neurons is established, the exact mechanism behind its formation is still elusive. Makoto Sato's team at Kanazawa University has been closely studying this phenomenon. Their recent findings explain how molecules in the brain work in conjunction to create the architectural marvels that are the columns.
The researchers base much of their work on the Drosophila (fruit fly) due to the organism's genetic similarities to humans. In this study they focused on the visual center of the fly's brain in a region known ...
Scientists at Japan's Nagoya University and the National Institute for Materials Science have found that a simple one-drop approach is cheaper and faster for tiling functional nanosheets together in a single layer. If the process, described in the journal ACS Nano, can be scaled up, it could advance development of next-generation oxide electronics.
"Drop casting is one of the most versatile and cost-effective methods for depositing nanomaterials on a solid surface," says Nagoya University materials scientist Minoru Osada, the study's corresponding author. "But it has serious drawbacks, one being the so-called coffee-ring effect: a pattern left by particles once the liquid they are in evaporates. We found, to our great surprise, that ...
