Mortality of unintentional injuries among children in Taiwan

Background Unintentional injury has been one among the leading causes of death among population aged 0-4 years and 15-24 years old in Taiwan. However, the subcategories of injuries remain further investigation. The purpose of this study was to understand the cause-specific mortality of injuries, to explore the differences across age groups and to extract policy relevant information for future injury prevention in Taiwan. Method We used death certificate data managed by the Department of Health and number of population compiled by Ministry of Interior for analysis. Unintentional injury deaths were categorized according to ICD-10 as V01-X59 and Y85-Y86. Contingency table was applied and cause-specific mortality rates of injuries were calculated. Result For those age under 1 year old, accidental threats to breathing was the leading cause of death. For the older age groups, traffic injuries were the leading cause of unintentional injuries death in age group 1-4 year, 10-14 year, 15-19 year and 20-24 year. Further exploration on the death certificates showed detail information of the external causes were not specified and often simply coded as unspecified traffic injuries mortality (V89.2). The proportion of unspecified traffic injuries were 45% among the traffic injured. Conclusion The high proportion of unspecified traffic injuries could be an information gap for strategic planning of injury prevention for the children and adolescent. The prevention of injuries requires teamwork of multi-sectors. Cross-validation of datasets collected by different ministries can be done for assessment of the exiting injury surveillance databases.