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Abstract
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Accurate and timely injury statistics are critical to assess the severity of public health problems. Such statistics allow researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers to determine morbidity and mortality rate disparities across socio-demographic subgroups and to evaluate rate changes over time. With such information, appropriate intervention strategies can be developed to target at-risk populations and situations.
Unlike data involving fatal injuries, non-fatal injury statistics are not available for most countries worldwide. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study Group regularly estimates injury morbidity rates for greater than 190 countries and territories using complex mathematical models. Indeed, these estimates are considered among the best available; however, the GBD Study Group estimates are also potentially biased by the absence of relevant or low-quality data in many countries [1].
The GBD Study Group used hospital-based surveillance and published epidemiological data to generate estimates of non-fatal injury indicators in China, the most populated country in the world [2]. These data include the number of hospital-reported injury cases; however, the data have at least three limitations. First, use of hospital-reported injury cases omits injury cases that may have been treated outside hospitals and clinics [3]. Second, Chinese hospitalization data are criticized as potentially influenced by changes in the national social medical insurance policy [4]. As larger segments of the population have become insured, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there may have been an artificial increase in higher hospitalization rates because insured individuals are more likely to seek hospital-based treatment. Finally, hospital-based surveillance data are derived from a limited number of monitoring points (84 areas and 252 hospitals), thus may not be generalizable to the entire population. Together, these limitations suggest that the GBD Study Group estimates may underestimate injury morbidity rates in China...
Language: en |