Poverty and children’s burn injury. How common citizens help shape Injury Prevention in South Africa

This month’s guest is a specialist in childhood burns and violence-related injuries in South Africa. Professor Ashley Van Niekerk is the deputy director of the Violence, Injury and Peace Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council-University of South Africa. He tells Editor-in-Chief of Injury Prevention, Professor Rod McClure, how the social changes of the 1990s and the current political and economic unrest in the country have been shaping his career in Injury Prevention. Find the Injury Prevention podcast on the journal website (injuryprevention.bmj.com) as well as on your preferred App every first Thursday of the month. The articles mentioned in this podcast are: Van Niekerk, A., Govender, R., Hornsby, N., & Swart, L. (2017). Household and caregiver characteristics and behaviours as predictors of unsafe exposure of children to paraffin appliances. Burns, 43, 866-876. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2016.10.022 Van Niekerk, A., Tonsing, S., Seedat, M., Jacobs, R., Ratele, K. & McClure, R. (2015). The invisibility of men in South African violence prevention policy: National prioritisation, male vulnerability, and framing prevention. Global Health Action, 8: 27649. https://doi.org/10.3402/gha.v8.27649 Lockhat R, Van Niekerk A. (2000). South African children and mental health: A history of adversity, violence and trauma. Ethnicity and Health, 5(3/4), 291-302.

https://doi.org/10.1080/713667462