Editorials

Deaths of children in house fires

You are never at your best at 4 am, and when the intensive care unit calls to say that the 7 year old girl with smoke inhalation is showing desaturation despite 100% oxygen it takes you a while to recall the ventilator settings. Admitted earlier that day, she was lucky to escape with her life after a house fire in one of the poorer parts of town. Few paediatricians are surprised by the steep social class gradient in childhood mortality and morbidity resulting from residential fires.¹ The link with poverty can be made intuitively on the basis of repeated exposure to scenarios like this.

Poverty is both a private trouble and a public issue. Between 1979 and 1987 the number of people living in relative poverty (with less than half the national mean household income) increased from five million to 10 million.² But . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Deaths of children in house fires

Phillip Whidden
BMJ 1996 312: 511. [Extract] [Full Text]

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• D'Souza, A J, Blakely, T A, Woodward, A (2008). The effect of eradicating poverty on childhood unintentional injury mortality in New Zealand: a cohort study with counterfactual modelling. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 62: 899-904 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Shenassa, E. D., Stubbendick, A., Brown, M. J. (2004). Social Disparities in Housing and Related Pediatric Injury: A Multilevel Study. Am. J. Public Health 94: 633-639 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Howden-Chapman, P (2004). Housing standards: a glossary of housing and health. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 58: 162-168 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Istre, G. R., McCoy, M. A., Osborn, L., Barnard, J. J., Bolton, A. (2001). Deaths and Injuries from House Fires. NEJM 344: 1911-1916 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Scholer, S. J., Mitchel Jr, E. F., Ray, W. A. (1997). Predictors of Injury Mortality in Early Childhood. Pediatrics 100: 342-347 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Roberts, I. (1996). Secretary of state for health declines to promote free distribution of smoke alarms. BMJ 313: 814-814 [Full text]  
• Whidden, P. (1996). Deaths of children in house fires. BMJ 312: 511-511 [Full text]  
• Harker, P., Moore, L. (1996). Primary health care action to reduce child home accidents: a review. Health Education Journal 55: 322-331