One in five child deaths is preventable, according to experts who have called for urgent action to save 1,000 lives a year from accidents, illness and neglect.
Doctors must be trained to explain to parents when children’s illness become life-threatening, while tougher safety standards are needed on furniture and home appliances, the researchers said.
Better road safety and improved mental health services to stop children taking their own lives are also needed, according a series of papers published in The Lancet. Although younger children and babies are more likely to die, a bigger proportion of teenage deaths could have been avoided, they said.
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About 5,000 children a year die in England and Wales but the researchers found “modifiable factors” in 20 per cent of them. Two thirds of fatal accidents and suicides were found to be avoidable, compared with 29 per cent of deaths from infections and 7 per cent caused by genetic abnormalities.
“There’s a lot more that we could do to reduce the risk to children,” said Peter Sidebotham, associate professor of child health at the University of Warwick and the lead author of the papers.
Previous research has concluded that 2,000 fewer children would die every year if Britain’s death rate was as low as Sweden’s.
Deaths have fallen hugely from 17,000 a year in the 1970s but improvements were still needed, said Dr Sidebotham, pointing towards efforts to make window blinds safer after several children were strangled by cords.
Doctors also need better training in helping parents to know what they should be worried about when a child was ill, he said. “A classic example is where a family goes to the emergency department with a child who’s unwell. Doctors say ‘come back if it gets worse’ and parents are left worrying about ‘is it worse or not?’ If we improved communication, we would tell parents what to look out for, for example that crying was less worrying than children who were “listless and passive”.
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Hilary Cass, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the report was “a serious wake-up call for healthcare professionals and policymakers”.
Tougher restrictions on drugs and pesticides and stronger safety measures on bridges are needed to stop people taking their own lives, the World Health Organisation has said as it reported that suicide is second only to road accidents as the biggest killer of young people.