Queensland’s Child Death Register shows 123 children have died in road crashes over the last 20 years. We analysed this data as part of our child death prevention work and found concerning trends arounds the use of child seats and seatbelts in Queensland. Our analysis indicates there is a need for education campaigns designed to increase child seat and seatbelt use in Queensland, including improving access to affordable child restraints and better education within remote parts of Queensland and in First Nations communities. Read more in our analysis.
Sepsis is the biggest single cause of preventable death of children in Queensland, yet our knowledge of childhood sepsis mortality is limited, with many cases possibly being missed.
We partnered with the Queensland Paediatric Sepsis Program at Children’s Health Queensland to complete Australia’s first population-based study to better understand the true incidence of childhood deaths from sepsis.
The Queensland paediatric sepsis mortality study identifies opportunities for practice improvements that can lead to better identification of sepsis in children, including improving death records, increasing parents’ awareness of sepsis and symptoms, and strengthening sepsis recognition guidance and treatment within the primary care sector.
What is sepsis?
We have a key role in improving the safety and wellbeing of Queensland’s children and their families and have a legislated responsibility to maintain a register of all child deaths occurring in Queensland, to report on trends and patterns, and to conduct research aimed at preventing future deaths.
This information paper was prompted by our previous research which had found an increase in the rate of pool drowning from 2014.
This report considers fatal and non-fatal immersion incidents of children aged 0–4 years in Queensland that have occurred in pools covered by Queensland’s swimming pool safety legislation (regulated pools). It uses information from the Queensland Child Death Register, immersion notifications and the Queensland Pool Register to identify regional patterns and findings about the two key methods of drowning prevention—pool fencing and supervision.