These current reports released shows that most pills taken by children at home are accessed from the parents’ purses, pills found lying carelessly on the floor, between cushions of seats and countertops, which are not out of their reach. Number of emergency children patients in most hospitals is on the rise because of the above reasons. At the same time, it can also be noted that most parents and nannies have never taken even a basic first aid course that they could apply in the eventuality of their kids taking drugs.

About the research study

A report released by Safe Kids Worldwide, a non-profit organization from Washington D.C, showed that emergency department records compiled by Consumer Product safety commission in 2011, 67,000 young kids were admitted to emergency rooms that year due to accidental medicine poisoning.

Researchers from Ohio, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital say that calls made from emergency rooms to U.S poison control centers were 544,000 visits for children under 5 years between 2001 and 2008.

Findings of the research study

Between 2001 and 2008, U.S poison control center say that accidental poisoning increased by 30% due to rise of prescription medicines people have bought at home. Researchers from Cincinnati Children hospital on the other hand showed that between that time duration of 544,000 cases, 454,000 were due to single medication and the unfortunate realization is that 66 of those cases resulted to deaths.

Safe kids worldwide showed that 27% of the cases were from misplaced pills and some came from those picked from the floor, 20% came from purses and handbags of adults. 86% of these cases came from adults who could be either parents, guardians, siblings or any other person they are staying with. The survey broke it down further to show that 47% came from mums and 38 % came from grandparents.

All these surveys indicate that accidental poisoning in kids is so far contributed to majorly by adults. This is a wakeup call to all adults; they should at all times ensure the safety of the young ones by adopting measures that will help to reduce these rising percentages of poisoning. Occurrence of accidents may be unpredictable but adults can choose to prevent them from happening in the first place. Unless preventive measures are taken hospitals will continue to record these cases in large numbers. This in return will also increase the number of children lost through accidental poisoning.

According to Safe kids CEO, some of the effective ways that can be applied or used to reduce these cases is by; storing the medications in places that are out of reach of children, setting reminders on phones or any other device for them to be careful when and after taking pills, leaving or storing pills on accessible pantries such as those in bathrooms should also be discouraged at all costs. Adults should also refrain from storing pills in their coat pockets and a lot of care should be taken with those kept in purses and handbags