As Cape Town cries foul over child abuse, malnutrition and child rape, trauma statistics reveal that the biggest threat to children lies much closer to home.
Falls, mostly from the arms of caregivers and from beds, have emerged as the main reason children end up in the Red Cross Children's Hospital trauma unit, seriously injured enough to be diagnosed with shock.
Although the statistics do raise questions about the causes offered in explanation by people who bring the children to hospital, the reality is that falls constitute one third of all cases at the trauma unit.
The statistics, analysed by "data mining" specialist Goran Dragosavac free of charge, have for the first time shed light on nearly 100 000 trauma unit cases treated between 1991 and the end of last year.
Data mining is usually used by big corporations to extract business information from large databases.
Able to pinpoint areas very specifically, for example Harare in Khayelitsha, the analysis details exactly the most severe threat to children in that area, according to the type of injuries most often treated in children who live there.
Nelmarie du Toit, assistant director of the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Southern Africa, said the hospital trauma unit's database was one of the biggest in the world.
Although the information was not representative of the city as a whole, most Cape Flats and township children were treated at Red Cross, giving a good indication of which communities needed intervention, and exactly what type of intervention was necessary.
"For prevention purposes, this analysis means we can pick up patterns and trends in certain areas then go back to that community and conduct the kind of prevention programmes they really need," Du Toit said.
In respect of falls, the analysis shows that across the racial and gender spectrum, children falling from beds, from their caregivers' arms and from playground equipment is a major area of concern.
A total of 32 766 trauma cases involving falls were examined.
Children being knocked over by cars, buses and taxis is another important danger area, particularly in townships where pedestrian accidents account for nearly three-quarters of all transport-related injuries to children from those areas.
Langa tops the list, followed closely by Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Atlantis and Gugulethu. In all five areas, nearly 75 percent of all children treated in the Red Cross hospital's trauma unit for transport-related injuries were run over by motor vehicles.
In Strandfontein and Grassy Park, the focus shifts to children on bicycles. In those areas, and just a little less so in Lansdowne and Kenwyn, about a third of all children who needed treatment in the trauma unit (transport-related) were injured while cycling.
Du Toit said this kind of information had important messages for the traffic authorities, which needed to help bring down the number of children injured in road accidents.
Essentially, she said, falls and motor vehicle accidents were "preventable" accidents. With the right interventions, most could be averted.
Assaults on children with blunt objects happen most often at school, the analysis shows. Second on the list are attacks with blunt objects in the children's own homes.
These assaults made up two-thirds of all assaults on children treated in the trauma unit in the past decade.
Rapes fall into the assault category and the analysis shows that 735 rape cases were treated during the review period, most occurring in another house or in an unspecified place. Fewest rapes took place at school.
Sebastian van As, head of the hospital trauma unit, said the analysis had also highlighted an alarming increase in the number of firearm injuries to children.
Although the numbers were much lower when compared on the graphs with other injuries to children, it was the "massive increase" since 1991 which concerned him.
The burns data is very specific, showing up causes of burns suffered by children from different areas, which Du Toit said was helpful in identifying the most vulnerable groups and where prevention programmes would be most valuable.
In Mitchell's Plain, most burnt children suffered injuries from chemical or electrical burns, or from explosions like an exploding flame stove. In Khayelitsha and Gugulethu, children were mostly burnt by boiling water or other fluids, flames from an open fire, or by appliances like irons or heaters.
Van As said the analysis, which still needed fine-tuning before the final report was compiled, did not offer solutions but had "given us a lot to think about".
"We know which areas are high risk so we need to go one step further and involve other roleplayers to plan effective prevention programmes," he said.