2024-03-13 13:25:32
The Shriners El Salvador Club will launch in June of this year the largest campaign on the prevention of child burns. The main objective of the strategy is to inform and raise awareness about domestic accidents that cause burns.
According to Juan Carlos Otaegui, president of Shriners El Salvador, 80% of burned children are the result of domestic accidents; Of that amount, 90% is from burns from hot liquids. In addition, there is a considerable percentage of children burned by household electrical appliances.
«We seek to inform and raise awareness about liquid and electrical burns. With this campaign we will visit schools with the Shriners firefighters, who will drive the trucks and do various activities. This campaign has the support of the Ministry of Health and is the largest and most ambitious, because it has massive reach,” said Otaegui.
In parallel, they will maintain informative and educational messages about the risks of gunpowder; However, they have identified that the number of children burned by gunpowder has decreased in recent years thanks to inspection actions and campaigns carried out by the Government.
«El Salvador has made great progress in reducing gunpowder burns. The Government’s work has been fantastic and joint works have allowed the number of burned children to decrease in this last year. That motivates us to carry out this large awareness campaign so that Salvadoran children can receive from their parents the guidelines to avoid domestic accidents, which are the biggest cause of burns in El Salvador,” said Otaegui.
Recently, Shriners El Salvador held a golf tournament in El Encanto, which featured 70 players from Panama, the United States and El Salvador.
The objective of the event was to raise funds for the children’s burn unit at Bloom National Hospital. Some of the prizes awarded were travel tickets, golf bags, among others.
«These tournaments become important because they position the country, they help the children, and we all win. The Ministry of Tourism supported us by sponsoring us through its El Salvador Travel brand and the Ministry of Health supported us with cooperation agreements,” said Otaegui.
Next year they will hold a regional golf tournament with about 500 participants from Mexico, Brazil, Panama and El Salvador. They will also do an inter-university race of healthy competition in October of this year with the aim of raising funds for burned children and raising awareness about the risks of home fires.