In schools under Plan’s Accidental Injuries Prevention Project, children can sing a clap song about security published on the health book by Plan.  

From March 2008 to August 2009, Plan and Medical University of Anhui cooperatively carried out Rural Children Accidental Injuries Prevention project in San He, Chen Zhuang and Chun Lin Townships of Pu Cheng County, Shaanxi Province, which is the first domestic children accident prevention project in rural areas.

Through baseline survey, the project group drew up a plan of project intervention and developed a series of training and propaganda materials, trained core teachers in project schools, conducted supervision to school activities for three times, organized experience communication and feedback and held final evaluation. The final evaluation and results show that there is an overall drop of children accident incidence from 16.2% on early baseline survey to 10.6% after developing the project of children accident prevention for more than a year; children’s awareness of accidents and behaviour correctness raised by 10%; class-missing days of children and economic burden caused by accidents both declined.

Studies show that children accident is a serious health problem in modern society compared to hundreds of diseases account for children death, becoming the leading killer of children from 0 to 14 years old. Other report indicates that about 40million students in middle and primary schools nationwide suffer accidents every year.

As a child-centered development organization, in order to explore an effective mode and method for Chinese rural children accident prevention, lower the injuries incidence and provide references to other areas on theory study and practical works of children accidental injuries, Plan and Medical University of Anhui developed this project in cooperation. 

Accidental Injuries Intervention Project in Multi-Perspective Way

A teacher in charge of the project in San He Middle School of Pu Cheng County said, “The project provided statistics, cases and materials for security education of school and also trained teachers, which offers a direction and meaning to our security education. Through statistics and cases, children felt the severity of accidents and knew where they should care”. In project schools, students also held security knowledge competition and ‘Security Guard’ electing activity to raise children’s security awareness and strengthen parents’ security knowledge by participation. 

The principal of Han Kindergarten expressed that in terms of security education for young children, in spite of supervision and guidance, teachers originally explained the knowledge to them by jingles which make children unconsciously stay away from accidents.

Plan and the Partners Sum Up Successful Experience

On 25^th October, Plan, Medical University of Anhui, Health Ministry of PRC, Shaanxi Health Ministry, Shaanxi Women’s Federation, Pu Cheng Women’s Federation and the Local Government gathered in Pu Cheng County of Shaanxi Province to sum up the successful experience of the project.

In the summing-up meeting, children from Dong Lu Primary School of Pu Cheng County performed short plays named “How to deal with a sprained ankle” and “what should do while cutting your hand”, which are wrote and directed and acted all by themselves. Children actively showed what can be done when hand is cut—do not wipe with paper nor coat with germy earth according to the aged, instead, it should be cleaned and wrapped timely and seek medical advice if necessary. The serious and lovely performance of children won the applause of audience from time to time.