18
Home Safety Practices for Prevention of Poisoning in Young Children
failed to open Safety Device 1 on their second try. For the device to be considered efficacious, 85 of children tested should fail to open the Safety Device within the
5 minutes allocated on their first try and 80 of children should fail on their second try after the investigator demonstrates how to open the lock. We did not continue
our study on Safety Device 1 after we found out that Safety Device 1 was no longer available for purchase in this country. Hence only 66 instead of the planned 100
children were tested on Safety Device 1 Table 6.
The mean age of the participating children was 39.24 months SD 9.42. The minimum age was 18 months and the maximum 68 months. A total of 61 45.9 children
were male and 72 54.1 were female. Their accompanying caregiver was mainly mothers 75.9, followed by fathers 14.3, grandmothers 6.8, grandfathers
1.5 and others 1.5. The accompanying caregivers’ mean age was 34.77 years SD ± 9.09 years. The accompanying caregivers’ minimum age was 21 years old
and the maximum 62 years old. Most of the caregivers 69.9 of them had up to secondary level education.
Out of the 4 children who could open safety Device 1 on their first try, 3 were males. On their second try eleven out of 18 children who successfully opened Safety Device
1 were males. The same trend was seen with Safety Device 2 whereby 3 out of 4 children who were successful on their first try were males and 8 out of 11 children
successful on their second try were males.
4.2 Socio-demographic Data
For the first audit, 146 households were evaluated from the Kinta District and 150 from the Manjung District. 8 6.1 households dropped out in the Kinta District
for the second audit and 12 8.0 from Manjung. For the third audit another 8 households dropped out in Kinta District and another two 1.4 households
dropped out from Manjung Table 7.
Socio-demographic data comparing both the districts at baseline is shown in Table 8. There was no significant difference in terms of relationships of the caregivers to
the child, age, ethnicity and education level of the caregivers.
To say that the household assessed has good knowledge on safe medication chemicals storage disposal we put together a score whereby one correct answer
from each of the following aspect i.e. how to safely store medication, how to safely store household chemicals, how to safely dispose medication and all three correct
answers on identifying possible household substances that can cause poisoning in children were considered to have good knowledge. Any household not fulfilling
the above criteria was considered to not have good knowledge. Knowledge level was only assessed during the pre-intervention visit.
19
Home Safety Practices for Prevention of Poisoning in Young Children
Only 30 20.4 households in Kinta District Group 1 compared to 79 52.7 households in Manjung District Group 2 had good knowledge Table 9.
Most caregivers in Kinta District Group 1 perceived their children to be safe from poisoning at home with 113 77.4 households safe from medication poisoning
and 120 81.6 from chemical poisoning. The same results were seen in Manjung Group 2 with 122 81.3 households perceiving their children to be safe from
medication poisoning and 121 80.7 households safe from chemical poisoning Table 9.
Good knowledge and high perception did not ensure a safe home in prevention of poisoning in children as the data from Manjung Group 2 revealed that although
they had better scores in knowledge and perception, only 21.3 of households were safe when audited as compared to 48.6 in Kinta District Audit 1 as shown
in Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Number of poisoning in children in the past year was 4 0.91 in the Kinta District and 6 1.26 in the Manjung District. The incidence of accidental poisoning in this
age group in Perak is about 3 and international data for developing countries is 5. The incidence of poisoning per 1000 children per year in the Kinta District was
9.11 compared to 12.55 in the Manjung District. p-value 0.85.
Table 7. Number of respondents for each audit visit by district Audit
Kinta District Manjung District
1st Audit 146
150 2nd Audit
138 138
3rd Audit 130
136
Table 6. Validity of safety device by ability of child and caregiver to open a drawercabinet Safety Device 1
Patrull Drawer Cabinet Lock n = 66
Safety Device 2
Patrull Multilock n = 104
Child Attempt 1 Inability of child to open the drawer with safety device
62 93.9 100 96.2
Child Attempt 2 Inability of child to open the drawer with safety device after
a demonstration 45 72.6
89 89.0
Parent Attempt Ability of parent to open the drawer with safety device after
a demonstration 66 100
104 100
