Book guides abuse diagnoses

Concern over high levels of trauma and child abuse in South Africa has prompted personnel at the Red Cross War Memorial Children\'s Hospital to launch a book, Paediatric Trauma and Child Abuse, aimed at improving the medical fraternity\'s responses to such incidents.

"This book offers a comprehensive approach to both early and definitive medical management of paediatric trauma as well as the legal, ethical and social issues involved with child abuse," says co-editor Professor Sebastian van As, head of the Trauma Unit at Red Cross and director of the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of South Africa.

Co-editor Professor Sudeshni Naidoo, of Department of Community Dentistry at the University of the Western Cape, said that the book would help professionals diagnose cases of abuse more easily. The book\'s guidelines make this easier.

Naidoo added that "seventy percent of all cases of child abuse have some affliction to the head and the neck".