Prevention is essential to ensure children have safe, accident-free holidays
Children are on vacation and are therefore under the care of family members, but it is necessary to warn them about preventing accidents – as they occur more often at home than at school. To do so, it is necessary to learn from experience by reflecting on the causes of the main accidents that occur in each age group.
One strategy may be to use the Cause Tree, a method developed to analyze and prevent accidents in the workplace. Based on accidents that occurred in the family in the past, or reported in the media, we can analyze the context of their occurrence based on the following question: what was necessary and sufficient for the accident to occur? How can we avoid similar ones?
Starting with my own maternal experience, I remember that my son, who was about ten months old at the time, was with me on my bed when I answered the phone. Soon after, due to my distraction, he crawled onto the bed and fell. I helped him, calmed him and he stopped crying.
As a mother and nurse, I observed his body and there was no apparent injury, he had a good lunch and then slept in his crib. I worked in the afternoon and he was looked after by a nanny. In the middle of the afternoon she called me because she noticed that when he woke up he was standing up in his crib, but was crying when he reached out his arm. I went home and took him to the doctor who determined that my son had fractured his collarbone. What was necessary and sufficient for this accident to occur? I let him loose on the double bed, where I remained close, but without restraining him when answering the phone.
Watch Mom Talk about safe holidays
We have already learned from experience and this is why pediatricians and other health professionals contraindicate “baby walkers” (their sale has been banned in Brazil since 2013). In 2006, the US Consumer Protection Commission, in cooperation with the company Mattel, announced the recall of Polly dolls and accessories with magnets, due to accidents involving children placing them inside their ears or in their mouths and accidentally swallowing them, causing stickiness. intestinal loops, perforations, even requiring surgery.
However, you can still see from a quick Google search that there are several ads for magnetic games and toys. In May 2021, British doctors warned that magnets commonly found in toys have the potential to cause serious accidents. At the time, there was a five-fold increase in the number of cases in which children required hospitalization after swallowing these objects. Experts say that these toys do not always come with warnings about this risk.
Likewise, special attention is essential when offering certain foods such as sausage, grapes, jabuticabas, cherry tomatoes and others that can obstruct the oropharynx, choking children who have not yet developed chewing and swallowing skills like adults. These foods need to be sliced so that they do not cause choking. The same applies to caring for latex balloons, the “bladders”, which when burst or deflated can be swallowed and suffocate a child.
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The Pipa should only be used in open environments (avoid slabs) without a nearby electrical network, as it could get tangled in the wire and cause electrical discharges with serious or fatal consequences.
A basin or bucket containing a little water can drown a baby who slips and dips his head in and is unable to get out, as happened to the brother of the famous singer Ray Charles.
We also know that curtain cords can choke a child who accidentally or playfully gets tangled up in them. We already have records of tragedies due to falls from unprotected windows, balconies and stairs. Free access to the elevator took a boy to an unprotected area where he fell and died, while his mother, a maid for the family that owned the apartment, took her boss’s dogs for a walk (a case in Pernambuco).
Recently, a friend burned herself when she bumped and knocked over the coffee maker that was on the edge of the kitchen counter, as she quickly turned around to pick up the coffee grounds. I grew up with my mother warning us about the importance of keeping pans and containers with the handle facing inwards and away from the edge of the stove, sink or other support, due to the risk of bumping into them and burning ourselves. She also warned us not to run around eating snacks or fruit, or with a fork or scissors in our hands.
At the beginning of January, the press reported the tragedy that struck the family of a two-year-old girl who died due to septicemia (generalized infection) as a result of an injury to her vulva caused by the fall of the bicycle she received for Christmas. Another accident that resulted in hospitalization for head trauma of a seven-year-old boy due to falling from a bicycle in Sobral, Ceará. These two cases alert us to the importance of using protective clothing, helmets and shoes that increase the protection of children when riding a bicycle, in addition to the importance of immediate medical evaluation and monitoring of injured children.
Finally, I conclude that society, toy producers, parents and other family members need to assess the risk and benefit for the full development, play and leisure of children in certain spaces, objects and toys.
And it is also necessary for cities and their architects and engineers to consider that children have the right to safe structures, spaces, furniture and toys that are appropriate for each stage.
*Damaris Gomes Maranhão is a nurse specialist in Public Health UNIFESP/USP, Doctor in Health Sciences from UNIFESP, Professor at the Vera Cruz Higher Education Institute, Consultant at CEDUC and Trainer at the Avisalá Institute, Mother of Bruno and Melissa, grandmother of Clara .
damarisgomesmaranhã[email protected]
