A child or youth is shot in Ontario every day and three out of four of the incidents are accidental, according to a groundbreaking study that attempted to identify at-risk groups for firearm injuries.Based on government health and immigration databases, a team of Toronto researchers found Canadian-born youth, particularly males, have the higher rates of unintentional firearm injuries compared to immigrant youth.Canadian-born males suffered 12.4 such injuries per 100,000 people, 72 per cent higher than the 7.2 among immigrant males between 2008 and 2012, during which almost 1,800 firearm injuries were reported among children and youth in the province.However, the risk of being a victim of intentional firearm assault is 43 per cent higher for refugees, at 4.7 per 100,000 people, than for non-refugees (2.4 per 100,000 people), said the study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.Also, immigrant children and youth from Africa are almost three times as likely, and those from Central America are more than four times as likely to be a victim of such targeted firearm assault than their Canadian-born counterparts, said the study by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.“A child or youth injured by a gun each day in this province is staggering,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Natasha Saunders, a pediatrician and associate scientist at Sick Kids.“Our findings indicate that this is a conversation we should be having with our patients and their families, particularly with these newly-identified high-risk populations.”While the Canadian-born males under age 24 suffered 1,032 accidental and 304 assault-related firearm injuries over five years, the comparable numbers for their immigrant counterparts were 148 and 113 respectively. Female non-immigrants had 137 unintentional and 31 assault-related firearm injuries; female immigrants had 12 and less than six ...
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