Assessing childhood unintentional injury literature in Africa and Zimbabwe: a protocol for a scoping literature review

Abstract

Injury is a looming calamity whose burden is growing rapidly and threatens to become an emergency in affected nations. The burden is experienced disproportionately in low and middle countries but attention in these countries has been focused on competing priorities of infectious diseases. Despite this, the burden of trauma deaths from injury now exceeds the deaths from human immunodeficiency virus, tuberculosis and malaria combined. This trend is expected to continue as a result of continued epidemiological transition as well as demographic changes that will see Africa's paediatric and adolescent population grow to a billion. The objective of this scoping review is to map the existing literature in unintentional injury in children in Africa. We aim to highlight areas where there is a gap in knowledge and provide an impetus for further research in this area in the continent. A systematic search of white and grey literature will be undertaken.