It is much more dangerous for parents to drive their children to school than to send them on a properly equipped school bus, according to international statistics.
The least safe way is if siblings, especially brothers, drop them off on their way to work.
These statistics are being quoted by paediatric surgeon Chris Fearne, who is setting up an NGO to champion children’s rights, Celebrities for Kids. Having been treating children’s injuries for almost 20 years, the father of three is embarking on a mission to curb them. Few are in as good a position as he is to know their cause.
The NGO’s first campaign, Child Safety and Injury Prevention, is focusing on ensuring kids have a right to a safe environment. Mr Fearne envisages it could last a year but is optimistic about the outcome.
The most serious injuries for school-aged children are related to traffic accidents and the chief contributor is going and coming from school, while the worst injuries are getting off and on the bus and crossing the road.
The problem is the lack of properly equipped buses, Mr Fearne says, pointing out that the government is investing in new buses for the public, so why not for schoolchildren too?
The presence of a responsible adult on each bus would decrease the rate of accidents by 50 per cent, he maintains, adding they should have doors that shut and are controlled by the drivers, as well as adjustable seat belts and equipment to cut them in case of accidents, fire extinguishers and first-aid kits.
Serious injuries and deaths could also be drastically reduced if drivers never overtake a stationary school van – almost every month, Mr Fearne’s ward receives children hit by a car when running off to go home.
To avoid this, school buses need to be immediately recognisable, he suggests.
Another cause for accidents is that school transport collects children too early and they are left unsupervised outside the school gates. Mr Fearne believes it is much more costly to treat these children for injury than to have a woman monitoring them, or making sure they do not arrive too early.
“No one is doing anything about these matters, and every day, my ward sees children due to preventable injury.”
The most common cause of admission to the hospital’s paediatric surgery ward is trauma. “Every day, two to three children are admitted to hospital due to concussion.”
In pre-school children, the most common cause of injury is falling – mostly babies off their parents’ beds – while the most dangerous is falling down stairs, off carriers because they are not properly strapped in, and off nappy changers.
Getting parents to get their children to sleep in their cots is another injury-prevention issue the NGO intends to tackle. “On a weekly basis, we are faced with five-month-olds, for example, in dangerous baby walkers, who fly down stairs because the normally cautious parents forget to shut the gate once.”
For school-aged children, the most common cause of injury is falling on the playing field, especially when unsupervised.
CFK’s main aims are to raise awareness on children’s rights and it plans to tackle issues in a non-partisan manner. Among them is obesity, Mr Fearne lists, saying “we have so many fat children that, for the first time since World War II, the upcoming generation is going to be less healthy than ours”.
Mr Fearne is roping in a number of celebrities, whose feedback has already been “overwhelming”. The plan is to use their voluntary contribution to lobby the government and agencies.
The reason for adding to his already abundant plate is simple: “Nobody else is doing it!”
While the Children’s Commissioner and Appoġġ agency are already doing sterling work with their limited resources, they remain government organisations and Mr Fearne believes civil society needs to get involved in children’s well-being.
“However, in no way are we going to duplicate what is already being achieved,” he insists.
Although Mr Fearne admits the Maltese have a happy-go-lucky attitude to a safe environment, he is optimistic “things will happen: if you break it down financially, you stand to gain. But more than that, we are lucky to live in a society that cares for children and few would hold back from helping them”.