Determinants Facilitating Unintentional Household Injuries among under 5 Children in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review

Introduction: Injury is the leading cause of death and long-term disability in children. Research evidences abound to support that the home is an important setting for injury. This review seeks to examine and map out the determinants facilitating unintentional household injuries among under 5 children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Inclusion criteria: 1) under 5 children who experienced unintentional household injuries, 2) risk factors for unintentional household injuries among under 5 children, and 3) any reported incidence of unintentional household injuries among under 5 children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, full-text articles of all potentially eligible studies were obtained in English.

The exclusion criteria include 1) children who are 5 years and above, who experienced either unintentional or intentional household injuries, 2) risk factors for injuries among older children, or 3) any reported incidence of unintentional household injuries among children in regions outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Also, non-English articles were excluded from the review.

Methods: The study adopted a scoping review methodology to map existing published literature, following the updated version of the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. It extracted determinants facilitating unintentional household injuries among under 5 children in Sub-Saharan Africa and analyzed them. Electronic searches were completed on Google Scholar and PubMed.

Results: The search strategy yielded 484 results in Google Scholar and 36 results in PubMed. The reviewers screened 315 studies at the title and abstract screening stage using Covidence, and only 63 studies were assessed for eligibility at the full-text review stage. 8 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. Gender (37.5%) and age (75%) were some of the major socio-demographic determinants identified. Household family size (62.5%) and open cooking places (50%) were the common environmental determinants identified, while child supervision by primary caregivers (50%) was the common behavioral determinant identified.

Conclusion: There is need for more studies to understand the determinants of household injuries, given the paucity of attention paid on household injuries among under 5 children in Sub-Saharan Africa. This will guide injury prevention strategies to be tailored to the specific environments taking into account local risk factors and available resources.