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News 

 

Martin Gallagher welcomes New Zealand Safety Week

02.09.2008

Martin Gallagher, MP for Hamilton West, welcomes Safety Week this week. Safety Week is part of the ongoing ACC campaign to educate New Zealanders about the risks in the home and encourage us all to think about taking some, often quite basic safety steps to prevent accidents.

 "Most people feel safest in their homes - but the reality is actually far different with the latest statistics showing home is the most common place for New Zealanders to be injured" said Mr Gallagher.

 

The figures show that one in seven New Zealanders were injured in their homes in the year from July 07 to June 08 - a third of all injuries. Worse still, more than 36,000 of those injuries required hospitalisation and 500 of those injuries resulted in death.  A child dies every two weeks from an injury in the home in New Zealand. 

 

In Waikato alone there were 5,254 injuries in the home last year and 30 fatalities.

The total cost of the region's home injuries was more than $44 million last year.  Across the country, the total cost of home injuries was a huge $377 million.

 

"This is a terrible tragedy, compounded by the fact that the causes of most of the injuries are often very easy to avoid. We can - and must - do more to prevent injury in the home and this is why it's the focus of New Zealand Safety Week this week" Mr Gallagher said

 

"The steps you could take to stay safe might appear very simple, but they could save a life.  How often do you run for the phone and risk tripping over, for example, when you could simply increase the number of rings on your phone instead?"

 

The kitchen is a particularly dangerous place and more injuries occurred in Waikato kitchens than in any other household room - a statistic common to most regions around the country.

 

The ACC website www.homesafety.co.nz lists these tips to make your kitchen safer: install safety catches on cupboards where you keep dangerous objects like poisons or knives, keep cupboard doors closed so you don't walk into them (more likely when they are hanging open), keep heavy objects in low cupboards so they don't fall on you, use a step ladder to reach high shelves rather than a chair and mop up water and spills as soon as you see them.

 

Mr Gallagher recommends looking at the ACC website www.homesafety.co.nz . "It is a great resource and there is a lot of useful advice there to help Waikato families make their homes less of an accident risk"

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