Introduction
Globally, around 5 million deaths reported in 2015 were due to injuries, contributing to almost 9% of all deaths and more than 10% of all disability-adjusted life years (DALY) lost.1 Unintentional injuries such as drowning, road traffic injuries (RTIs), falls and burns are the leading causes of injury deaths among those aged 0–15 years.2 3 More than 90% of child injury deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) with injury death rates being 3–4 times higher in LMICs than in high-income countries (HICs).4
Rapidly developing HICs such as those in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have also observed a significant rise in the injury burden in recent years.4–6 Urbanisation, increased motorisation, migration for job opportunities and lack of integrated trauma systems are cited as some of the reasons for this ascending trend.7 8 While other LMICs in the Middle Eastern region are still focusing on maternal and child health, and communicable diseases, these rich gulf countries have made substantial gains in infant and child mortality only to be offset by the burden of injuries and non-communicable diseases.9–12 More than 20% of all deaths in the GCC were attributed to injuries and account for approximately 15% of all DALYs lost.13
The Sultanate of Oman, one of the six countries comprising the GCC, is located in the Southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Almost 50% of the population lives in the urban areas, that is, parts of Muscat and the Batinah coastal plain. Oman is a HIC with a total population of 4.8 million, where 13.9% and 33.7% of the population are under 5 years and under-15 years, respectively.14 15 In this country of mostly young individuals, injuries are the leading cause of hospital-based mortality in individuals 1–44 years of age.1 Despite an overall decrease in mortality from unintentional injuries by 38.9% since 1990, there has been a 50% increase reported in RTIs for the same time frame, mainly affecting individuals 26–50 years of age.16 With relatively under developed emergency medical services (EMSs) in rural areas and only a handful of dedicated trauma centres, many injury victims use private transport and receive initial assessment and care in smaller hospitals, before being transferred to urban trauma centres for definitive care.16 Additionally, trauma information systems are not widely implemented, and therefore, scarce information is available about the distribution and risk of injuries among children in Oman to make informed decisions about targeted age-specific policies and programmes on child injury prevention.17
In this paper, we analysed data from the trauma registry implemented in two Omani hospitals to describe the epidemiology and risk factors for injuries among children, who are defined as 15 years and below in the Omani hospital settings. This paper aims to provide a profile of paediatric injuries including the nature and intent of injuries across age and gender profiles, to better understand this burden in Oman and other GCC countries. It also demonstrates the value of collecting systematic data in hospital settings to inform injury prevention efforts. To our knowledge, this is the first such registry analysis from Oman in this population subset.