Thursday, September 10, 2009

No Accident

Bonjour,

There's no such thing as an 'accident' is what I'm reminded of whenever I speak to my colleagues, read an article, or analyze a report at Safe Kids Worldwide. My supervisor even challenged me to think of ONE childhood unintentional injury that could NOT have been avoided, and I couldn't think of one. So, if you have one in mind...pleassseee let me know. Perhaps he's right by further proving my lifelong theory of 'everything happens for a reason.' In this case, preventable reasons that take lives. In a book written by the founder and director of Safe Kids, Martin R. Eichelberger, titled Pediatric Trauma, he stated: "The most important step in preventing injuries is overcoming a sense of fatalism, that injuries are "accidents," "acts of God," or random events that cannot be predicted. Injuries must be viewed as diseases that can be prevented by using the principles of epidemiology, engineering, biomechanics, and health education" (pg 15).

With that in mind, I find it to be a bit depressing to sit alone in my office for numerous hours reading testimonies of parents whose little boys and girls die due to things like road traffic injuries, fire-related burns, falls, poisoning, drowning, etc. All it takes is to put the child in a car safety seat & buckle up, install fire alarms & check their batteries, child-proof their homes, and have anti-entrapment pool drain covers. It's freaking ridiculous to have nearly more than ONE MILLION children die each year due to clumsiness and unpreparedness of adults and products with defaults (World Health Organization, 2008).

This sort of report is slowly instilling a fear within me...a fear that's making me want to stay as a bachelor for at least the next 7 years. That way, I can continue to make the best of my youthfulness while continuing to help establish legislation that will make the world a better place for my children. Speaking of youthful enjoyments, for Labor Day, a group of friends came to Washington, DC and we partied through Sunday night until the club we went to had to be shutdown at 2 am. Apparently there was a false fire-alarm..yup..things were that hot in there. And then I found out the hard way that I no longer live in NYC where the Metro runs 24/7. So after a 'cheap' $40 taxi ride home to Rockville, MD, I swore to never miss the 12:30 am trains on Sunday nights (they run later on weekends).

Goal of the month: get on the other side of Google. Instead of me searching for things on Google, I want people to search for the result of the project I'm working on (which cannot be disclosed). I want to write my first peer-reviewed journal article in the next few weeks (at least be acknowledged in one). Gotta aim for the stars!

Until Next Time,

Emmanuel H.

**sigh**...what I think about every time I look out my10th floor office window...

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