Injuries in Nepal - A Neglected Public Health Burden and Ways Forward

The classic definition of injury, derived from Gibson (1961) and Haddon (1963) is: An acute exposure to physical agents such as mechanical energy, heat, electricity, chemicals and ionizing radiation interacting with the body in amounts or at rates that exceed the threshold of human tolerance. Injuries are an important component of non-communicable diseases. Injury is often labelled as an ‘accident’ which tends to imply the event was unavoidable and/or unpredictable. In contrast, most injuries occur as the consequence of a predictable set of circumstances and are therefore preventable. Often traditional beliefs in communities are that injuries are unavoidable and a consequence of fate. Other diseases have seen a reduction in incidence as a consequence of evidence-based research, and a similar approach now needs to be applied to injuries