Ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson will speak at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 on the subject "Child Injury: An Avoidable Tragedy".

Ambassador Peterson will be joined by Prof Chitr Sitthi-amorn, Immediate Past Dean of the College of Public Health, Chulalongkorn University to discuss TASC's work and the Thai National Injury Survey, which specifically examined the situation in urban and rural Thailand.

The discussion aims to raise awareness of the high death toll from child injury across Asia and why the problem is largely unrecognised. It's not on the priority list for governments; the deaths are largely occurring off the official record; and the people resign themselves to the loss believing it's the work of evil spirits, retribution for past wrongs. Child deaths through injury, primarily drowning and road traffic accidents, are taking more lives each year than HIV, malaria, dengue fever and tuberculosis.

So why aren't prevention programs like survival swimming commonplace in Asia? And why are these deaths going largely unrecorded? Ambassador Peterson and Prof Sitthi-amorn will discuss what their research has revealed and their vision for reducing the number of children who are needlessly dying each year.

Both members and non-members of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand are welcome to attend. The fee for non-members is 300 baht. The discussion will begin at 8pm.

The club's address is Penthouse, Maneeya Center, 518/5 Ploenchit Road, (connected to the BTS Skytrain Chitlom station), Patumwan, Bangkok. For more details, go to www.fccthai.com.

TASC Co-founder Ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson speaking at the launch of the
Thai National Injury Survey