Annual report 2009-2010, NT Child Deaths Review and Prevention Committee
NT Child Deaths Review and Prevention Committee annual report 2009-2010
Office of the Children's Commissioner Northern Territory
E-Publications; PublicationNT; E-Books; The Children's Commissioner Northern Territory annual report; Annual reports
2010
Date:2010; Made available via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).
English
Children, Aboriginal Australian; Northern Territory; Periodicals; Death; Causes; Statistics; Periodicals; Children and death; Periodicals
Northern Territory Government
Casuarina
The Children's Commissioner Northern Territory annual report; Annual reports
2009-2010
application/pdf
Attribution International 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
Northern Territory Government
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/236802
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/640686
Page 35 Underlying Causes of Death and Causes of Death of Children in the Northern Territory The CDRPC will this year report on Cause of Death and Underlying Causes of Death for child deaths in the period 2006-2009. The World Health Organisation (WHO) clearly distinguishes between the cause of death (COD) and the underlying cause of death (UCOD). COD is defined as all those diseases, morbid conditions or injuries which either resulted in or contributed to death and the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced any such injuries. UCOD is defined as (a) the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence, which produced the fatal injury (WHO, 2008). Depending on the circumstances of the death, the COD and UCOD can be the same or can differ. An example of when they differ would be if a person was a passenger in a car, that car was involved in a traffic accident, leading to the passenger dying of internal haemorrhaging. In that case, the COD would be the internal haemorrhaging as it was the injury that caused the death of the person, and the UCOD would be the traffic accident as it was the major event that caused the death. In the tables and figures representing the COD and UCOD, child deaths have been grouped in classifications that are based on ICD-10 AM groupings with slight modification for simplicity and improved understanding. This data allows the child deaths occurring throughout the Northern Territory to be more thoroughly examined with regard to how and why the deaths occurred. Such understanding can help raise public awareness and may also contribute to the development of targeted responses to reduce the incidence of such deaths.