BALTIMORE, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Falls cause more than two-thirds of all injuries to Chinese 65 and older, Chinese and U.S. researchers say.
Researchers in China and at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Injury Research and Policy in Baltimore find 70 percent of all injuries occurred in the home or in the street, with public buildings being the third most common place of injury for rural residents.
The study, published in Injury Prevention, finds divorced elders have 4.6 times the risk of injury, and widowed elders have 2.2 times greater risk, as those elderly who are single.
"The identification of the most common locations and causes of injury is useful for the development of interventions and priorities," study author Susan Baker of John's Hopkins says in a statement. "The results indicate the divorced and widowed elderly should be targeted as high-risk groups for injury. Prevention programs for all major causes of injury need to be developed as soon as possible in China."
Baker and colleagues analyzed data from the 2008 National Health Services Survey of China -- an assessment of health services needs conducted every five years based on face-to-face interviews with representatives from more than 56,000 households.
