Letter

Accidents needn’t happen

Dear healthmatters — I was interested to see the article on accident prevention. Mandy recently spoke on this subject at the Home Safety Conference in Bromley, attended by delegates from all over the country.

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the main points to be highlighted at the conference was the lack of any useful routine collection of accident data at a local level.

This was felt to be a major drawback to setting meaningful priorities and monitoring the success of previous programmes.

A multi-disciplinary approach was also seen as vital to successful intervention strategies, and of particular interest was the possible role of GPs, whose contribution to data collection and accident prevention, especially among elderly people (with the annual home assessment) could be vital.

I was very pleased to hear the Health Policy Advisory Unit is producing a model strategy for use by local and health authorities, since following the conference it is hoped that multi-agency discussions will take place in Bromley to try to solve some of these problems.

I would be very pleased to hear from anyone who has been involved in accident prevention programmes, especially if evaluation can demonstrate some success!