Hyderabad: Everyone loves their home. It is supposedly the safest of all places. And yet, ‘home injury’ is one of the leading causes of unintentionally caused injuries worldwide, including India.
Home injuries that lead to death include, burns, kitchen injuries, poisoning or electrocution. While there is no clear data on home injury deaths, a postmortem study conducted in Gandhi Hospital, on 100 bodies, all victims of domestic accidents, has pinpointed kitchen injury as a major cause. The study revealed that most victims domestic deaths were men.
This has become an important health concern with the ratio of such deaths higher in rural areas. Domestic accidents may be due to falls, fire accidents like stove or gas cylinder bursts, electric shocks and consumption of medicines that had crossed the expiry dates.
Out of the 100 deaths caused due to domestic accidents, 51 per cent were men. Almost a third of those who died in domestic deaths were persons aged above 60 years and another 27 per cent were of children below 12 years.
“The ratio of men is higher in domestic deaths, especially men above 60. Most of these deaths have been because of a fall, mainly in the bathroom and because of a head injury caused due to the fall,” said Dr T. Vikramaditya, who authored the study.
A number of these deaths are also of labourers working at construction sites. They stay away from their families and mostly in temporary shelters. “They are prone to accidents as they cook themselves. Sometimes, while cooking under the effect of alcohol, an accident might occur. 35 percent of the men are such labourers and the issue is more in urban slums,” he added.
