Prevention of injury and the promotion of safety - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 164/1

Every year, about 235 000 citizens of the Community die as a result of an accident or violence. Injuries are, after cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases, the fourth most common cause of death in the Member States.

In children, adolescents and young adults accidents and injuries are the leading cause of death.

Many survivors of severe injuries suffer life-long impairments. Accidents and injuries are a main cause of chronic disability among younger people leading to a heavy and largely avoidable loss of life years in good health.

On average, injuries account for about 6,8 million hospital admissions, which represent 11 % of all hospital admissions in the European Union.

Injuries represent a huge financial burden on health and welfare systems, causing about 20 % of sick leave and constituting a major factor for reduced productivity.

The risk of an injury is unequally distributed in Member States and in social groups, and varies by age and gender as well. The risk of dying from an injury is five times greater in the Member State with the highest injury rate than in that with the lowest rate.

In contrast to many other causes of illness or premature death, injuries can be prevented by making our living environment, as well as products and services we use safer. There is ample evidence of proven effectiveness in accident measures that are still not widely applied throughout the Community.

Most of these measures have been proven cost-effective, because the benefits of prevention for health systems often exceed by a factor of several times the costs of intervention.

The important advances that have been made in a number of areas of safety concern like traffic or the workplace should be continued. In addition, attention should be paid to other areas which up until now have been less covered like home, leisure and sport accidents, and prevention for children and elderly citizens.

Consideration should also be given to the link between the consumption of alcohol and drugs and the number of injuries and accidents as well as to intentional injuries, in particular domestic violence against women and children.

It therefore seems necessary to make better use of existing data and develop, where appropriate, an injury surveillance and reporting mechanism, which could ensure a coordinated approach across Member States to develop and establish national policies on prevention of injuries, including exchange of best practice. Such a mechanism could be developed within the Community Public Health Programme (2), any successor programmes and any other relevant Community programmes, and should be built on the basis of representative national injury surveillance and reporting instruments to be developed in a coherent and complementary manner.

In order to streamline the resources of the Community Public Health Programme and any other relevant Community programmes and to tackle injury prevention most effectively priority areas have been identified: safety of children and adolescents, safety of elderly citizens, safety of vulnerable road users, prevention of sports and...