Ensuring the safety of children
The birth of every child brings joy to the family. Every member of the family, friends and relatives both far and near share in the joyous moment. Among some families, money is saved during the woman’s pregnancy in order to have a lavish naming ceremony once the child is born.
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However, as children grow up, some parents shirk their responsibilities to them, and expose these innocent children, who are weak and vulnerable, to a lot of dangers.
Consequently, children are exposed to many dangers at home, at school and in the communities. Every stage of the lives of children is crucial and they need to be protected to grow healthy devoid of major accidents.
That is why right from birth, measures are put in place by parents and society at large to prevent exposing babies to danger. Basically as a child begins to crawl or take his/her first steps chemicals and harmful materials in the home or school are put away to ensure the child does not come into contact with them. Sometimes even the tablecloth on the living room centre table is removed as toddlers could pull it and fall. As they grow other medicines are put on top of cupboards or shelves to prevent children from reaching them.
Accidents at home
However, in spite of these precautions, accidents do occur at home. Children accidentally swallow poisonous chemicals such as kerosene, and items such as coins, crayons etc. while others get burnt by being exposed to hot liquids or fire.
Worse still, some get drowned in their own homes when man-holes are not covered, others are trapped in abandoned cars and fridges. For instance in May last year, two siblings, Akua Dufie, five years, and Yaa Nyantakyiwaa, two years, died through suffocation in a locked car. They were said to be playing together when they entered a Ford vehicle parked in their house at Medoma near Kumasi and got locked up in it.
Again in February 2014, two young boys identified as Yusif Mensah, five years, and Joel Tetteh, four years, were found dead in an abandoned car at a mechanic workshop at Labadi in Accra.
The children allegedly went missing for some hours after going out to play. The owner of the shop later spotted the children trapped inside the vehicle, as they lay dead, and reported the matter to the police.
The worst and/or common cases are children getting burnt or exposed to hot liquids. According to the Director of the National Reconstructive Surgery and Burns Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, over 50 per cent of admissions to the unit involved children and adolescents and that about 80 per cent of the cases were due to negligence or poor supervision. “Majority of the causes of burns were from hot liquids and the commonest places where the burns occured were the kitchen and the bathroom,” he said.
He advised that care givers and parents in particular needed to be aware of the dangers in their environment and take charge to prevent such accidents.
Dangers on the road
Indeed, quite a large number of children are exposed to many more dangers when they step out of their homes. It is surprising how some parents leave their children, as young as four years, to walk alone to school with the excuse that the school is just a stone’s throw.
Statitistics from the National Road Safety Commission indicates that 33 per cent of pedestrian deaths are aged less than 15 years. Children can be knocked down by cars while on their way to school or returning home from school.
With the high rate of crime in the country children could be kidnapped on their way to school if they are all alone. That gives parents a good reason to put some protective measures in place for their children no matter the distance to the child’s school. In fact, adults will lose nothing at all if they accompany children to school and parents also ensure that there is a proper chain of custody for all children.
Not all schoolchildren have the privilege of riding in their parents’ cars to and from school as some have to walk to school or use public transport. There is, therefore, the need for a well- planned out education within the school system for all children. Such children should be taught what to do and the precautions they have to take when walking or boarding cars.
During such times children need to be advised to walk in groups when they close from school, church or any social gathering. One important thing is for them to desist from asking for rides from strangers or picking taxis all by themselves from the roadside. Instead, the best thing is for them to go to the taxi stations to board a vehicle, since that would offer them better security.
What children should do
The advise from the Deputy Director of the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Freeman Tettey, in a recent interview on this subject asked children to raise an alarm and run as fast as they could or call the police emergency numbers 1855 for MTN and Vodafone and 191 for other networks whenever they sensed danger.
DSP Tettey asked children to commit their parents names, where they reside and their telephone numbers to memory so that they could call them in times of trouble.
He urged parents not to leave their children, especially the younger ones, by the roadside when they get to the school, but rather make sure they send them to their respective classrooms.
According to DSP Tettey, children do not just get missing but end up somewhere once they are not found. They are either trafficked or sometimes their body parts are used for ritual and medical purposes.
In view of this, parents, children, guardians, school heads, teachers and the general public should be conscious of the security arrangements for children, especially, since this is an election year where bizarre things sometimes happen to the weak and vulnerable.
The lives of children should not be taken for granted. We should all strive to make our communities a safe place for children to grow up to become adults so they can contribute towards the development of the country.