Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #113149

Rebekah L. Craig, BS, College of Public Health, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, 4301 W. Markham, #820, Little Rock, AR 72205, 501-257-4859, craigrebekahl@uams.edu

Since World War II, landmines and unexploded ordnance have become a scourge for the developing world, claiming 15,000 to 20,000 new victims each year. Landmines geographically fragment affected nations, frequently isolating communities from basic necessities, including health services. Persistent landmines, capable of detonating even a century after emplacement, represent a long-term public health problem that demands innovative, targeted prevention efforts. A comprehensive review of the current literature identified several barriers to effectively preventing landmine injuries and successful strategies for overcoming these obstacles. This study focuses on three categories of intervention: primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention programs. The literature suggests that many mine awareness education programs are not accurately targeting high-risk individuals. Roughly 80% of civilian mine-incident survivors report receiving no prior mine awareness education. Secondary prevention efforts are complicated by long discovery and prehospital transit times, often without any medical care during transport. Studies estimate that only 5% of disabled persons in developing nations can access rehabilitation services, for tertiary prevention, and demonstrate that survivors are not dynamically integrated into most current rehabilitation programs. The evidence demonstrated in the literature, identifies strategies for increasing effectiveness of prevention efforts, including emphasis on educating populations that have community-level risk factors and high-risk adults, development of rural prehospital trauma response and evacuation networks, and policies aimed at integrating community participation into rehabilitation and advocacy efforts. These approaches to intervention strategies, will not only aid in designing effective programs for landmine injury prevention, but may also be applied to other traumatic injury prevention programs.

Learning Objectives:

• ·Recognize the responsibility of the public health community to reduce the disease burden of landmine related injuries.
• ·Identify the key factors for successful landmine injury preventative interventions.
• ·Apply the results of research to create effective primary, secondary, and tertiary preventative interventions for landmine and other traumatic injuries.

Keywords: Landmines, Injury Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.