Preventing childhood injuries would seem a daunting task. But there’s a long list of proven ways to make the world safer for children. The World Health Organisation wants its 193 member nations — and especially those in the developing world, where most deaths occur from injury — to know that accidents don’t have to happen. It released a 211-page “World Report on Child Injury Prevention,” three years in the making, earlier this month.

The report says injury deaths can be reduced to an astonishing degree when societies put their minds and money to the task. In 2004, the global rate for both sexes combined was 39 deaths per 1 lakh children.

Many prevention strategies endorsed by rich societies are now being adopted in the developing world. They include strict drunken-driving laws; requirements that wells be covered and swimming pools fenced off; installing window guards in upper-story apartments; having standards for child-resistant lighters; requiring child-resistant packaging of drugs, stove fuel and poisons; and establishing poison-control centres and burns units.

Traffic injuries are the leading cause of death worldwide for 15 to 19 year olds and the second-leading cause for children aged 5 to 14. But the use of seat belts, child seats and helmets, and the institution of “graduated licensing” of new drivers is essentially unknown in many countries.

For individuals, prevention is often economically burdensome. According to the WHO report, a factory labourer in a low-income country must work 11 times more than his counterpart in a high-income country to buy a bicycle helmet. That’s why injury prevention programmes increasingly feature product giveaways paired with education.

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