Chemical Injuries Surveillance
Thursday 9th February 2012
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Chemical Injuries Surveillance
Between 2001 and 2009, ESR was commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Health (MoH) to develop and maintain a national Chemical Injury Surveillance System (CISS). Since then, several models have been deployed. The system involved the collection and analysis of hazardous substance injury data that reflected the majority of data sources in the injury pyramid (see Fig. 2 Chemical Injury Surveillance for NZ, 2006). National mortality data were sourced from the Coronial Services Office (CSO) and national inpatient hospitalisation data were received from the New Zealand Health Information Service (NZHIS). In addition, local hospital poisoning notifications (emergency department patients and inpatients) were voluntarily submitted from a number of hospitals representing the following DHBs: Auckland, Capital and Coast, Wairarapa, West Coast and Southland. A range of chemical/poison related notifiable injuries (hazardous substance injuries, chemical poisoning from the environment, decompression sickness, lead absorption and toxic shellfish poisoning) from EpiSurv were also included in the CISS. Summarised National Poison Centre (NPC) calls and PHU spraydrift complaints were also included. The wide range of data sets enabled the CISS to provide a comprehensive overview of the burden of injury associated with hazardous substance injuries in New Zealand.The CISS was primarily developed in response to the legislative requirements of Section 143 of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act (1996); all hazardous substance injuries that result in hospitalisation are to be notified to the Medical Officer of Health. In December 2005, an amendment was made to the HSNO Act that requires all diagnosing medical practitioners, in addition to hospitals, to report injuries caused by hazardous substances to the Medical Officer of Health. In September 2007 the Hazardous Substances Injury (HSI) case report form (CRF) was launched in EpiSurv as the mechanism for collecting hazardous substance injury information for the Ministry of Health. The CISS was intended to encompass this legislative requirement, and extend it to achieve the greatest public health utility. For this reason, hazardous substances incorporated in the CISS included substances not covered by the HSNO Act such as medicines in finished dose form and party drugs or alcohol when classified as a food. The purpose of s143 and the CISS was therefore to provide information for public health action and informing health policy formation. These measures in combination can be used to reduce the incidence of hazardous substance injuries in New Zealand and improve public health
Chemical injuries reports are available here.
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