Melis­sa Doughty

Act­ing Health Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said yes­ter­day ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,300 of the world's chil­dren die dai­ly from in­jury-re­lat­ed com­pli­ca­tions. He was speak­ing at the launch of the na­tion­al stake­hold­er work­shop to de­vel­op a strate­gic plan­ning for in­juries, vi­o­lence pre­ven­tion and con­trol. The event was held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

Guests in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO) mem­bers of the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion and Brent Bat­son, of the Na­tion­al Road Safe­ty Coun­cil. He said ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple die year­ly as a con­se­quence of vi­o­lence.

"Even with­in the 21st-cen­tu­ry, with the de­vel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies and a greater ex­panse of ed­u­ca­tion to the mass­es, in­jury and vi­o­lence is still a press­ing glob­al is­sue," he added. Cit­ing in­jury-re­lat­ed deaths as one of the most chal­leng­ing glob­al health is­sues of this cen­tu­ry, Ram­bachan said five mil­lion peo­ple die from in­jury-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents year­ly. He said over the last 15 years, leg­is­la­tion was passed to help pre­vent vi­o­lence and in­jury-re­lat­ed deaths.

The leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ed:

• Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act 2007

• Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Act 1999

•Of­fences against the Per­son (Amend­ment) (Ha­rass­ment) Act 2005

• Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act 2004.

Ram­bachan al­so called for greater pub­lic aware­ness of the is­sue. The work­shop al­so looked at a sit­u­a­tion analy­sis of in­jury and vi­o­lence in T&T, un­in­ten­tion­al-in­jury pre­ven­tion and the glob­al decade of ac­tion for road safe­ty 2011-2020 and oth­er is­sues.