Over 2500 Bay of Plenty children were admitted to hospital due to preventable injuries over a four-year period, forming part of a nationwide figure that has alarmed one of the country's leading child safety organisations.

Safekids Aotearoa has created infographics of recent unintentional and intentional child injury statistics available for each DHB area in the country.

Some 15 per cent of preventable injuries suffered by Bay of Plenty children occurred at school. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

Nationwide, 40,000 children were admitted to hospital due to preventable injuries between 2008 and 2012.

During this time, 97 per cent of all child hospital admissions were classified as ‘unintentional injuries', and included incidents such as motor vehicle crashes, falls and drowning.

Fall-related injuries are the leading cause of hospital admissions, while boys are most at risk.

For deaths during the 2006-2010 period, ‘suffocation' (which includes sudden unexpected death of an infant) is the number one killer for most DHB regions, followed by ‘motor vehicle traffic crashes'.

The Bay of Plenty District Health Board recorded 2501 children hospitalised for an injury. Of these, 97 per cent were unintentional, two per cent were assault, one per cent self-inflicted and less than one per cent undetermined.

Every year 485 Bay children are hospitalised because of an unintentional injury.

Though during the above period, BOPDHB hospital admissions have dropped from 1170 to 1031.

In terms of type of injury, ‘fractures' and ‘open wounds' featured highly throughout each DHB area.

The most common place of injury is the home (40 per cent), followed by school (15 per cent).

Bay figures also show 34 children died of injury-related causes between 2006 and 2010. Of this 764 per cent were unintentional, 12 per cent self-inflicted, nine were assault and six per cent undetermined.

The leading cause is dying from a car crash with nine, followed by suffocation (six) and drowning, (five).

Safekids Aotearoa director Ann Weaver says the nationwide figures are 'alarming”.

'Every week, on average around 150 children in New Zealand are hospitalised with serious injuries from an unintentional injury, and a further one to two children are killed the same way,” says Ann.

'We hope that these infographics can be used by DHBs to work with injury prevention stakeholders across the country, delivering evidence based interventions that include falls injury prevention campaigns, safe sleeping education and child restraint programmes.

'All DHBs need to do their part to ensure children enjoy a life free from the adverse effects of unintentional injury and that they grow to their full potential.”

BOPDHB's child and youth portfolio manager Johnny Louie says everyone strives for fewer injuries and the DHB have made child and youth health a priority, endorsing the multi-agency child and youth strategy developed in 2014.

A Child and Youth Mortality Review and Injury Prevention Coordinator has been implemented to look at what can be learned from these events.

Johnny says the DHB is also part of the Midland Trauma Network and have worked with local councils through a Safer Community project and Travel Safe to prevent and reduce injuries, including a range of road safety initiatives.

Along with Midland DHBs, a safe sleep policy has been developed and funded the introduction of pepi-pods in response to sudden unexpected death of an infant.