Incidence and determinants of severity of unintentional injuries among students of private schools in Dubai: a cross-sectional study.

A cross-sectional study was performed on a student population in grades 7-12 in 10 private schools in Dubai in the academic year 2012/13. The study was in two phases. The first was used to estimate incidence rate of injuries, where the total injuries that took place in the schools in 2012 was divided by the total student population in the studied schools in the same year multiplied by 1000. The second was to study the determinants of severity through randomly selecting 1000 cases of injuries. A self-administered questionnaire was given to the participants after obtaining verbal consent. Sociodemographic characteristics showed that most (74.2%) of the students in this study were male and about half (57.3%) were aged 12-14 years. The incidence rate of injuries was 297.7/1000, and most of the injuries (88.9%) were mild. Poor school safety was blamed for most of the injuries, and falls were the most frequent type of injury.