OBJECTIVETo understand the incidence and prevalence by causes of injury, and the proportion of different causes of deaths, as well as occurrence of disability due to injuries.

METHODS200,000 families were randomly sampled in 4 rural communities. Questionnaire on occurrence, disability, death of injury and related risk factors for all family members living at home from Feb. 12, 2002 to Aug. 12, 2002 were studied.

RESULTSThe incidence rate and prevalence rate in the observed population were 65.1/1000 and 69.2/1000, respectively. In every 100 cases of injury there were one death and 6 disabled. Fall, animal bites, striking or crushing, cutting and piercing, road accidents, fire and poisoning were the common causes in injury. Animal bites was the leading cause while drawing appeared the highest in children aged 0 - 14. Rate of road accident was the highest in adults aged 15 - 34, while falls causing higher proportion of disability in population aged over 60.

CONCLUSIONSBased on the report of National Disease Surveillance Points System, there were 592,000 death cases of injury in Chinese rural areas every year, meaning 59.2 million cases of injury and 3,490,000 disabled cases every year. Since injury causes serious social and economic loss with different orders of incidence and mortality, it is necessary to develop different preventive strategies on different target populations and different causes accordingly.