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  • Death
    • Trend: overall
    • Trend: cause
    • Table: summary (rate)
    • Table: summary (n)
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What does this mean?

In Kids Stats child death refers to children and young people who die of any cause.

Why is it important to monitor?

Children and young people can die as a result of diseases or morbid conditions, such as respiratory disease. They can also die as a result of external causes, such as transport incidents, drowning, suicide and assault.

The deaths of children and young people are tragic and distressing. Their lives are cut short and impact significantly on their family and friends.

Deaths of children and young people reflect a range of factors including:

• the environments in which they live

and for some children and young people:

• their serious health issues
• risk-taking behaviours.

Deaths, particularly deaths from external causes, are often preventable. As is the case with injury, deaths can be reduced by attention to child-friendly environmental design, regulation and public awareness education. For example, child-proof fencing around swimming pools and placing infants for sleep on their back [1,2].

Indicator

The indicator used in Kids Stats for monitoring death is:

The number of transport fatalities and deaths due to drowning, fatal assault and suicide for children and young people aged 0 to 17 years, as a rate per 1,000 children and young people aged 0 to 17 years.

Main findings

The mortality rate for children and young people showed a steady decrease from 1997 to 2005.  There was an increase of 0.01 deaths between 2005 and 2006.

With the exception of 2004 the fatality rate for males is higher for males than for females from 2002 to 2006.

The rate of transport fatalities increased by 0.01 from 2005 to 2006. This increase can be explained by an increase in the transport fatality rate for males, which is now the highest it has been since 1997.

Notes: [1] Thompson, D.C. & Rivara, F.P. (2000). Pool fencing for preventing drowning in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2), CD001047.
[2] NSW Child Death Review Team. 2005-2006 Report. NSW Commission for Children and Young People, Sydney.

For details of the references and to find out more about the data follow the link to Glossary and further information.