Malta has received a rap on the knuckles over lack of safety measures for children around water, with an EU report giving the island a low score for the prevention of drowning.
As children look forward to summer, the report notes that Malta still lacks laws on the minimum number of lifeguards required on beaches and at public pools and one requiring barrier fencing for pools.
It also recommends that the island adopt a national policy making water safety education, including swimming lessons, a compulsory part of the school curriculum.
The report, called Child Safety Report Cards 2012, measures the level of child safety in the 27 EU member states. Compiled by the NGO European Child Safety Alliance with the financial support of the European Commission, it looks at pedestrian, passenger and cycling safety, prevention from drowning, burning and falling, and child safety leadership.
All in all, Malta was found to be quite a safe place for children. It was classified as being safer than the EU average and in the 11th place among the 27.
The island scores best when it comes to pedestrian and cycling safety, although the report recommends changes to passenger car rules so that all children under the age of 13 will be obliged to sit at the back.
Still, injury, although low, is the leading cause of death in children and adolescents aged 0-19 years in Malta.
Another area where the island scores badly is in the prevention of falls, a common cause of injury among children.
The report notes that while Malta has made significant progress in this area over the past few years, particularly where it comes to safety at playing fields, it needs to step up its preventive measures.
It recommends laws requiring environmental changes to prevent children from falling out of windows in all buildings more than one storey high as well as rules for all private and public buildings requiring safe design for guardrails to prevent falls from balconies and stairs.
The safest place for children and adolescents in the EU is Finland while Greece was found to be the least safe.
No country has adopted all its recommended safety measures, the NGO says. “There is room for improvement across all countries, particularly given the inequalities between countries with over six times difference in unintentional injury rates between countries with the highest and lowest rates,” the report notes.
Among examples of inequalities in the EU, only 13 member states have a national helmet law requiring use of a bicycle helmet.
And no country has a law requiring children to use a rear-facing child passenger restraint to age four, although this is already normal practice in Sweden, where child passenger deaths in this age group have been reduced to almost zero.