Understanding Gendered Patterns Of Burn Injuries

Abstract

Burns is a major challenge causing deaths, disability, and disfigurement. Globally, there are about 300,000 deaths due to burns every year (WHO, 2008). Of these, 95% take place in developing countries with South East Asia recording nearly 57% of these deaths. Extrapolation of data from major hospitals in India, indicates an estimation of 7 million burn incidents and 140000 burn deaths every year, making burn injuries the second largest group of injuries after newlineroad accidents (Gupta et al, 2010). anghavi, et al (2009) estimated 163,000 fire related deaths in India based on medically certified causes of death in urban areas and a verbal autopsy based sample survey for rural populations for the year 2001. Of these fire related deaths, 65% were female deaths, with 57% of these female deaths occurring in women between 15-34 years. Incidentally, for the age group 15-34 years, 15% of all deaths were found to be fire related. Women were on average three times more likely to die of fire related injuries than men. Of the newline140000 burn deaths per year in India, 91000 are women which are much higher than the number of maternal deaths (Bhate-Deosthali and Lingam,2016).The dissertation explores the phenomenon of burns from a public health perspective; additionally, given the overwhelming association of this injury/death with one gender, namely newlinewomen, the dissertation also examines how far public health research in India is informed from a gender perspective. The theoretical framework for the study was informed by the public health approach, the Gender, and health framework of the Liverpool School of Medicine and the newlineHaddon Matrix from Injury Research. Using a qualitative research design, the study took a public health approach to uncover the social dimensions of occurrence of burns among young women, the modes of information gathering in the hospital setting, means of enquiry to identify the causes of burning and the circumstances preceding the episode of burning on the one hand,and current management of such ...... newline