Newspaper reports as a source for injury data in developing countries

Injuries are an important public health problem and a leading cause of deat h among adults and children. In most of the developing world, with rapid ch anges in lifestyle, rural development, urbanization, an increase in number of vehicles, introduction of mechanized farming and pesticides in agricultu re, the effect of injuries on mortality and morbidity is expected to increa se. Injuries have been infrequently studied in developing countries; their impo rtance is incompletely understood and they are seriously neglected in healt h research and policy. The reasons for this situation may be many, but one important reason is the unavailability of data in countries to assess the m agnitude of the problem. Hospital and police records are the primary data source for injuries in the majority of the developing world. Newspaper reports may be an alternative source for injury data. This hypothesis was tested in the Rawalpindi Divisi on of Pakistan by collecting data from newspaper reports for both intention al and unintentional injuries for 6 months (January-June 1999). This was co mpared with police data for the same time period. The results revealed that newspapers report more injury-related events and for some categories, such as suicides, the reporting was far greater by newspapers than the police. We conclude that the current system of police data collection needs to be s trengthened. Newspapers may serve as a comparative source of information to evaluate the coverage of police data.