Extent, nature and hospital costs of fireworks-related injuries during the Wednesday Eve Festival in Iran

BACKGROUND: Fireworks are commonly used in local and national celebrations. The aim of this study is to explore the extent, nature and hospital costs of injuries related to the Persian Wednesday Eve festival in Iran. METHODS: Data for injuries caused by fireworks during the 2009 Persian Wednesday Eve festival were collected from the national Ministry of Health database. Injuries were divided into nine groups and the average and total hospital costs were estimated for each group. The cost of care for patients with burns was estimated by reviewing a sample of 100 patients randomly selected from a large burn center in Tehran. Other costs were estimated by conducting semi structured interviews with expert managers at two large government hospitals. RESULTS: 1817 people were injured by fireworks during the 2009 Wednesday Eve festival. The most frequently injured sites were the hand (43.3%), eye (24.5%) and face (13.2%), and the most common types of injury were burns (39.9%), contusions/abrasions (24.6%) and lacerations (12.7%). The mean length of hospital stay was 8.15 days for patients with burns, 10.7 days for those with amputations, and 3 days for those with other types of injury. The total hospital cost of injuries was US$284 000 and the average cost per injury was US$ 156. The total hospital cost of patients with amputations was US$ 48 598. Most of the costs were related to burns (56.6%) followed by amputations (12.2%). CONCLUSION: Injuries related to the Persian Wednesday Eve festival are common and lead to extensive morbidity and medical costs

Knowledge, attitude and practice of children and young adults on road traffic injuries

Knowledge, attitude and practice of children and young adults on road traffic injuries  Mahfozphour, S.1 (PhD); Soori, H.2* (PhD); Einy, E.3 (MS); Iranfar, M.4 (MS), Amiri, Z.5 (PhD); Hadadi, M.6 (PhD); Hydar, F.7 (BS) 1. Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. 2. Professor, Faculty of Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. 3. Lecturer, Dept of  Midwifery, Research Center for Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.4. Researcher, Research Center for Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical    Sciences, Tehran, Iran.5. Associate Professor, Faculty of Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.6. Supervisor, Center for Accident Prevention and Safety Promotion in Center for Accident  and Emergency      Management of The Ministry of Health, Tehran, Iran.7. Expert and Police Officer, Applied Research Office of Traffic Police, Shahrak Azmayesh, Tehran, Iran.    Abstract Background and aimAccording to records, the rate of road traffic injuries among children and adolescents is high. The aim of this study was to determine knowledge, attitude and practice of children, adolescents and young adults between 9 and 30  regarding traffic accidents in 2008. Materials and methodsIn this descriptive study, 304 children and adolescents between 9 and 14 as well as 327 young adults between 15 and 30 were randomly selected according to their distribution in 19 educational districts and all universities of Tehran in 2008. Data were collected by a 3-part questionnaire validated and made reliable by content and test-retest methods respectively after taking the informed consent of the subjects. The scores were divided in 3 ranks: Good (above 75%), moderate (50%-75%), and poor (below 50%). Findings Means of age in the first and second groups were 11.7±1.6 and 20.7±4.3 respectively. Overall, 50.7% was male. The practice score of females in the first group (9-14 years old) was better than males (