At a time when many parents are concerned over news saying that helmets may impede bone development in children, as a mother myself, I’m trying to make a decision on whether or not to buy one for my son.
Last month, before the new helmet law came into effect, Ly Ngoc Lien, chairman of Nerves Surgery at Viet Duc Hospital in Ha Noi, said helmets could prove dangerous to children under three due to their weak necks.
Lien said that if children were to wear helmets that were too heavy, it would actually be easier for them to fall over and injure their necks because of the added weight. Children who could not sit up and support themselves should not wear helmets, because in the case of an accident, it would be easy for them to get hurt, maybe even paralysed.
However, Dang Xuan Vinh, leader of the nerves group at HCM City’s Children 2 Hospital, sees a lot of children suffering from head traumas they received in traffic accidents while not wearing helmets.
Vinh says that three-year-old children should wear helmets to save their lives.
Further arguing against Lien’s idea, Greig Craft, the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation’s chairman, said that even babies older than six months could and should be wearing helmets.
Craft said that when children were on motorbikes, their heads were roughly 1.5 metres from the ground, and that if they fell to the ground they would fall at a velocity of 19kph, which would doubtlessly lead to serious head or brain injuries, even possibly death or life-long disability.
Craft, who said the percentage of children wearing helmets reduced to nearly 20 per cent nationwide after the announcement that helmets could spoil children’s bones spread, also said that children could get hurt if they wore helmets that were too heavy, but he didn’t think that parents should place such heavy helmets on their children.
Safety is the number one priority with my son, so I still really want to buy him a good helmet. I never really drive far with him, so it would only ever be a short time that he would need to wear it.
As far as this goes, most doctors and helmet producers think that light and safe helmets are the way to go to protect children.
Doctor Dang Xuan Vinh advises parents to purchase good helmets for their children, saying that a good helmet must be light but still safe for children. As a helmet producer, Na Huong, Protec Viet Nam’s executive director, said that a good helmet for children would be about 200g so that it would not influence their bones in any way.
However, in Viet Nam there has been no study on the connection between a child’s health and various helmets.
Nguyen Duy Chinh, from the Viet Nam Centre for Standards and Quality, said that when they set up the standards for children’s helmets, they just paid attention to its protectiveness and safety, not to the deeper influence on children.
But after all of this, I still don’t have an answer for my problems. Of course, a helmet is good to protect my son if there is an accident when travelling by motorbike, but no one can yet prove that helmets won’t influence his bone development. — VNS
Last month, before the new helmet law came into effect, Ly Ngoc Lien, chairman of Nerves Surgery at Viet Duc Hospital in Ha Noi, said helmets could prove dangerous to children under three due to their weak necks.
Lien said that if children were to wear helmets that were too heavy, it would actually be easier for them to fall over and injure their necks because of the added weight. Children who could not sit up and support themselves should not wear helmets, because in the case of an accident, it would be easy for them to get hurt, maybe even paralysed.
However, Dang Xuan Vinh, leader of the nerves group at HCM City’s Children 2 Hospital, sees a lot of children suffering from head traumas they received in traffic accidents while not wearing helmets.
Vinh says that three-year-old children should wear helmets to save their lives.
Further arguing against Lien’s idea, Greig Craft, the Asia Injury Prevention Foundation’s chairman, said that even babies older than six months could and should be wearing helmets.
Craft said that when children were on motorbikes, their heads were roughly 1.5 metres from the ground, and that if they fell to the ground they would fall at a velocity of 19kph, which would doubtlessly lead to serious head or brain injuries, even possibly death or life-long disability.
Craft, who said the percentage of children wearing helmets reduced to nearly 20 per cent nationwide after the announcement that helmets could spoil children’s bones spread, also said that children could get hurt if they wore helmets that were too heavy, but he didn’t think that parents should place such heavy helmets on their children.
Safety is the number one priority with my son, so I still really want to buy him a good helmet. I never really drive far with him, so it would only ever be a short time that he would need to wear it.
As far as this goes, most doctors and helmet producers think that light and safe helmets are the way to go to protect children.
Doctor Dang Xuan Vinh advises parents to purchase good helmets for their children, saying that a good helmet must be light but still safe for children. As a helmet producer, Na Huong, Protec Viet Nam’s executive director, said that a good helmet for children would be about 200g so that it would not influence their bones in any way.
However, in Viet Nam there has been no study on the connection between a child’s health and various helmets.
Nguyen Duy Chinh, from the Viet Nam Centre for Standards and Quality, said that when they set up the standards for children’s helmets, they just paid attention to its protectiveness and safety, not to the deeper influence on children.
But after all of this, I still don’t have an answer for my problems. Of course, a helmet is good to protect my son if there is an accident when travelling by motorbike, but no one can yet prove that helmets won’t influence his bone development. — VNS
No comments:
Post a Comment