“House Without Dangers for Your Child!” campaign could reduce number of home accidents involving children

Forty-five vice directors on mother and child healthcare of the Family Doctors Centers in all the districts of the country, the municipalities of Chisinau and Balti and in the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia attended a national training seminar and received instructive materials on how to prevent home accidents involving children younger than five, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting a communique from the organizers. The seminar was organized as part of the national communication campaign “A House Without Dangers for Your Child!”that was carried out by the Ministry of Health as part of the Moldovan-Swiss project “Regionalization of the Pediatric Emergency and Intensive Care Services in Moldova” (REPEMOL), with support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. According to the manager of the project Aurora Dragomiristeanu, the vice directors on mother and child healthcare during February-March will distribute the new instructive materials and information on how to prevent accidents involving children younger than five during local training seminars with family doctors, pediatricians and nurses. Lilia Oleinic, senior consultant at the Health Ministry's Mother and Child Health Division, voiced hope that the materials distributed as part of the campaign will help reduce the number of home accidents involving children aged under five by at least 25%. In the European Report on Child Injury Prevention for 2008, the World Health Organization says that the morbidity and death rate from home accidents involving children younger than 19 is high in Moldova. Moldovan ranks fourth by the death rate from drowning, fifth by death rate from poisonings and fifth by the death rate from fires and electrocution. 110 children younger than five are involved in home accidents in Moldova every day. At least six children of these are hospitalized.