Many people take medications on a daily basis for chronic medical conditions. Asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure and allergies are all conditions that might require daily medications. Many families may also keep over the counter medications in their home for home care of headaches, colds, or aches and pains. We need these medications for our medical problems, but in the wrong hands, these medications can cause problems.
According to the CDC, over 70,000 emergency room visits are because of accidental medication overdoses in children under the age of 18. In fact, 1 out of 151 2 year olds are treated in an emergency room for an accidental ingestion, and over 80% of the emergency room visits of children under 12 are due to unsupervised children taking medication either intentionally or unintentionally.
What can we do to protect our children? The first place we can start is in the home. Always lock your medications up and out of reach of children. You can even buy a medication storage tote to safely store your medications. Safetote is a great product that can hold medications and even comes with a lock to keep the medications secure.
Don’t leave your medications lying around, especially if you have a small child in the house. Medications, especially capsules and pills, can look like candy to children. They could easily overdose by taking these medications thinking they are candy.
The Protect Initiative is a collaboration of several public health agencies, private sector companies and professional organizations that is helping experts to develop strategies to keep children safe. They have put together some improvements in packaging to make it harder for children to get into the medications. They have also refined the dosing measures to help reduce errors in dosing.
With the help of the protect initiative and diligence in the home, we can reduce the accidental over dosing of our children.