Statistics on children’s accidents from the Beijing Children's Hospital showed that over 400 children went to the hospital for operations to remove objects stuck in their tracheas.

Surgeons with the hospital’s emergency department said they may have to operate on up to three or four such patients each morning.

The most common objects to be removed were nails, buttons, peanuts, soybeans, and sometimes even keys, bottle openers and pencils were also found in children’s tracheas.

According to the Beijing Morning Post, most of the accidents involved children aged below three years. Children injured by accidentally falling were usually between three to nine years old. And children between four and nine years accounted for the highest proportion of the victims in traffic accidents.

The public health system improvement in China in the past five years has decreased the child death rate due to infections by 54 percent, and the rate due to diarrhea and tuberculosis by 38 percent and 30 percent respectively. However, deaths through accidents have only dropped by 18.5 percent. Related statistics also show that accidents are the top killer of children worldwide, and the figure has been on a steady increase in the past few years.

(21dnn.com 03/12/2001)