Safe Community Backi Petrovac

Country: Serbia
Number of inhabitants: 14.681 (by December 31, 2002)
Programme started year: 2004. Leader prof. dr. Ana Sabo
International Safe Communities Network Membership: Designation year: 2008

Info www.backipetrovac.org.yu
Full application available:http://www.phs.ki.se/csp/safecom/backipetrovac.htm

For further information contact:

Prim. Dr Mirjana Milankov, MD, PhD
National Center for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion
D.Spasic 13/31
Novi Sad
Republic of Serbia 21000
Phone:+381 63 83 93 111;
E-mail:drmirjana.milankov@gmail.com
www.backipetrovac.org.yu

Leader prof.dr. Ana Sabo

Vision
To create a safe and healthy living and working environment in Municipality of Backi Petrovac by promoting a safe and healthy culture.

Mission

To reduce the frequency of injuries and accidents through collaboration of different community groups, local corporations, business, organizations, associations, schools, health care providers, government agencies and people of the Municipality.

Backi Petrovac Municipality is located 25 km northwest of Novi Sad, capital of Vojvodina region, and 100 km northwest of Belgrade, capital of Serbia.

Backi Petrovac Municipality is the smallest one in Vojvodina. It has only 14.500 inhabitants, located in four villages: Backi Petrovac, Kulpin, Backi Maglic and Glozan.

Inhabitants of Backi Petrovac Municipality are Slovak, Serbian, and Rom minority, as well as Croatian and Greeks. The languages are Slovak and Serbian. Approximately 30% of inhabitants are farmers, while 30% are employed by local factories.

The programme covers the following safety promotion activities:

The program Safe Community injury prevention is being carried out by teams promoting safety of children, youth, working and elderly persons as well as the persons with special needs.

The Mayor, dr. Jan Sabo, services of the local government responsible for the security, health protection, social, law affairs and education, health professionals from the Health centre, police, firemen, kindergarten, schools, sport clubs, association of retired people, women association, association of individuals as well as the members of local newspapers, radio and TV station, all participate in the program.

FOR THE AGE GROUP

Children 0-14 years:

Information given at Health Centre by Paediatric doctors and Public Health Nurses to parents about nutrition, care and home, leisure and traffic safety. Different kinds of written information material are produced and delivered. The Health Centre also passes information about safety equipment and how to obtain them.

Cooperation with the police station and activities related to the traffic:

• Education and training:
• Going from home to the kindergarten and school;
• The pedestrians; and the traffic participants` behaviour;
• Getting acquainted with the traffic signs and regulations;
• where and when am I riding the bicycle;
• Talking to the police officers in the kindergarten and school;
• Children visiting the police station.
  
  
  

Activities related to the safety at home:
Education:

• How to behave when alone at home;
• Dangers of fire and electrical circuits at home;
• Dangerous poisons and medicines at home;
• Demonstrating firefighting;
• Visiting the fire brigade station and getting acquainted with the firefighting equipment.

Activities related to the safety at home and in public places:
Education:

• Proper behaviour, communicating with unknown persons;
• Parental seminar:
• Safe child;
• Preventing violence at home and in public places.
  

Youth 15-24 years:

The main issues are preventing use of drugs, violence, vandalism, traffic safety and the efforts to make the youth themselves organizing drug-free arrangements and different kinds of meeting facilities such as sports clubs.

Educational efforts aimed to lower the drugs use, ascertain that all age groups identify safe related risk factors as seen by the youth, and to try to lower this risk.

Training on first aid and sport safety was organized for secondary school students. Concept on anti-drug abuse, anti-crime and anti-smoking was also instilled to them. Students were recruited for the safe and healthy promotion activities at the public road crossing facilities and in order to enhance harmony of the community.

The presentation of ‘Regular exercise for healthy life’ was launched to establish a positive life style in students.

The cooperation on local crime prevention is organized through interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral groups with the help of local newspapers, radio and TV station.

Adults 25-64 years:

The adults’ population of age 25-65 is involved into program through all situations and environments.
Work place as one of most critical settings for grown up people. Work safety is responsibility of institutions, of employers and observed by county level labor inspection and health protection administration.
Road safety programs serve safe traffic conditions both for pedestrians and drivers. Positive changes in local and national alcohol policy should also prevent accidents and injuries – in different settings, environments and situations.
For better information and communication we use county and municipal level media.

Education: Prevention of injuries at workplaces (including accidents and work-related illnesses) at traffic and at sport activities;

• Fire prevention;
• Falls prevention;
• First aid.
• The volunteer fire department offers fire safety courses to the municipalities’ institutions.
• Treatment opportunities have been established for alcoholics, drug abusers and their families.
• In addition, network groups have been set-up for some of these groups, i.e. alcoholics, children of abusers, young drug abusers and relatives.
• Addict consultants in the municipalities’ work together with physicians, social workers and businesses.
• Personal counselling within the municipal organisation consists of a broadly comprised group of individuals with professional backgrounds that can help employees with personal problems of an acute nature.
  

Elderly 65+ years:

In Backi Petrovac there are two organisations dealing with the elder population: specially trained nurses from the health center visit regularly old sick people, providing the basic health support. Physiotherapist visit disabled ones, who invite them, and provide basic rehabilitation.
The volunteers in Red cross visit old people at least twice a week, and help them in obtaining food and other necessities from the stores, help them with the visits to the health centre, help them in cleaning etc.

Volunteers- young people, help old citizens in removing the snow from the streets in the front of the houses.

AT THE FOLLOWING ENVIRONMENTS:

Home:
In fact, home and leisure time injury prevention has been the main objective of the program. All interventions targeted on different population groups are very tightly related to that objective. In that respect all associated groups have been involved, i.e. family doctors, municipal social workers, local media, sport-clubs etc.
Public Health Nurses are informing the parents having newborns by making home visits and providing consultations. Discussions with parents take place four times after the first home visit informing them about the risk of accidents in relation to the child’s development, reviewing checklists, and talking about different kinds of equipment.
To prevent injuries and accidents among the elderly who live at home, measures have been implemented through the Public Health Nurse and some project of NGO.

Traffic:

Information and educational efforts in traffic aimed to improve traffic knowledge, how to cross the road, how to behave on bicycle, bicycling by the canal, giving the instructions about safe bicycling.

To reduce the risk of accidents Municipality of Backi Petrovac has reduced the city speed limit and constructed pedestrian road on Backi Petrovac to Kulpin.

Promotional campaign of safe driving, for example “No speeding”, “Never drive after consuming alcohol”, etc. have been emphasized. Moreover, both drivers and passengers have been educated to put on the safety belt to minimize the extent of car accident injury.

Putting the fluorescent foils on the bikes, educational efforts aimed to lessen the traffic accidents. Putting traffic lights at the crossings of the roads between the schools.

Occupational:

When starting the new job all workers have obligation to visit the occupational health service and check up their health status. Depending on the activity, the protective wearing during the working hours is obligatory (gloves, masks, head protection etc). All employers have obligation to send workers to special courses on safe working conditions.

Particular attention is paid to work in agriculture fields. TV, newspapers and radio talk about safe ways to drive machines, clean wheels when entering roads, be careful when working with machines. Specialists from different fields regularly visit farmers, give lectures about trauma prevention, safe spraying, manipulating agricultural accessories.

School:

Survey of the previous activities concerning children’s security

a)Monitorial duties: Monitorial duties of teachers in the hall during the breaks, Monitorial duties at the registration desk: pupils- the morning shift, hygiene maintaining workers - the afternoon shift, Monitorial duties of pupils in the hall during the breaks, Monitorial duties of teachers in the school dining-room, Night monitorial duties is done by a night watchman. Special security measures: during excursions /monitorial duties of teachers and collaboration with police/, during pupils’ parties /teachers’ and pupils’ monitorial duties, special police /traffic/ control during the first and the second week in September. Collaboration with the police service has been established during the entire school year for ex. in regard to severe violations /robbery, fight…/, police control in the school surroundings has been reinforced during the school year. The school entrance and the school yard have been particularly illuminated at night.

b)Education: Continuous traffic instructions concerning the lower grades of pupils’ behavior have been given by teachers /especially to the first and the second grade pupils/,Special police education concerning the traffic security, Realization of the project “The safe child” in the school year 2004/2005 in lower grades, /all the pupils, teachers and all other school stuff has been included into the project/, The realization of this project took place in the school year 2006/2007 and workshops were realized by specialized service on the theme “Security in school and monitorial duties” aiming at reinforcing monitorial duties in the school. The result of these workshops is the “Monitorial duties reference book” in which the specialized service summarizes the pupils’ suggestions and strengthens the way of monitorial duties realization.

c) Internal rules reinforcing the pupils security in school: The rules of behavior at school, the rules of security measures, ways and acts of the elementary school pupils, it is not allowed to leave the school yard during the educational process.

d)Activities aiming at the pupils security reinforcing: There is a possibility of checking of the children’s presence in additional classes and sections by particular teachers, On the initiative of Parents Council the project “Video monitoring” has been elaborated, Elaboration of the pamphlet named “The most frequent trap” /children’s excuses used in manipulation of their parents/ about which the parents will be informed during the next first Parents Consultation, The book of monitorial duties, During the Grade and Teachers Council Meetings the security problem, monitorial duties etc. have always been analyzed, Everyday fixing broken, damaged and dangerous things, Solving problematic situations immediately after their manifestation. The Specialized Service has also been working on prevention of such the problems, Moving of the lower grades downstairs of the school building.

e)Other: Because of some incidents that happened in the school yard the school asked for the Community help to solve the problem of the stray dogs. We have got the information that we might get the special rifle to eliminate these dogs.

Sports:

There are programmes aiming at safety promotion in sport areas and children playgrounds.
Those are defined as associated (coherent) target groups. Sport clubs are facing stricter regulations on safety at their venues. Training methods and protection in sports has also been targeted in order to prevent accidents. There is an ongoing campaign, supported by our program to persuade people to use helmets while cycling. We work in tight collaboration with local Basketball-club and local Bike-club. We also do have a good contact to local sport and leisure time shops as concerns safe equipment advertising.

Leisure:

Children playgrounds: Until 2003, the only official playgrounds at the municipality were at preschools and schools yards. In 2005 in Kulpin, Glozan and Maglic one playground was build for the youngest, and at Backi Petrovac 3 playgrounds for the youngest. They are supplied with safe equipment, and are situated at safe places.

For children, also sport grounds are reconstructed, with proper lights, so that children can play during the night, especially in the summer.

Household:

The Safe Community Project makes an effort to inform parents about the risk of injuries in small children at home. For this purpose, a series of small short lasting program on local radio and newspapers have been started

Seniors:

Presentations and discussion on injury risk and prevention in seniors are to be offered in Senior Club. A small group of young people is organized willing to help cleaning the streets during the winter in order to decrease possibility of slipping.

Traffic:

The safe community started with public talk about safe community. For children, talk about using helmet has began, as the children still do not use it. Proper marking of the bicycles is a very important step in making the traffic safe. All trailers used in farmers transport and bicycles get fluorescent foils in order to increase their visibility and to lower the possibility of traffic accidents.

The Backi Petrovac city is in special danger as daily approximately 6000 vehicles pass through the city center. Therefore, beside the traffic light which was build in 2005 anther traffic light will be build in the end of 2006. The project to build a road around the Backi Petrovac is completed. It should start as soon as money is available.

Environmental activities:

Gun for putting the street dogs to sleep and safely remove them to reception point is bought.

Public action aimed to shorten branches above the roads is taken. Pedestrians will be able to use road again and this will lower the possibility of people getting injured in the traffic

Violence prevention:

In collaboration with county level alcohol and drugs prevention program and Backi Petrovac Police.

Suicide prevention:

Suicide prevention is on the agenda of health sectors – Health Care Center.

Programs aiming at ”High risk-groups”:

In a special area that has large-scale challenges in terms of living conditions the program is targeted at pregnant women, newborns, elderly and disabled persons. Preventive activity for those groups is on the social and health care sectors.

Educational pamphlets about protecting children and elderly against physical, psychological and sexual abuse are distributed to the public by the Social Welfare Department.

Surveillance of injuries:

The most frequent causes of injury at municipality Backi Petrovac are injuries caused at work in the fields and with vegetables. At health centre Backi Petrovac there is evidence about these injuries.

Our volunteer collected all injuries which occurred at Municipality in the past year. During 2007 there will be prospective collecting of the data. The questionnaire will be given to health centers. Health workers will fulfill questionnaire about the persons injured, type of injury, and cause of injury, expected consequences.

The main indicator of effectiveness of the safe Community Project are data of injuries rate from Backi Petrovac ambulances added with selected data from official statistics. The data will be followed quarterly and they will be compared with previous frequency.

For the end of 2006 and 2007 we have set indicators of partial activities They are: to increase number of bicycles with proper lights; to minimize number of trailers without proper lights to minimum; to increase number of pedestrian roads free of grass and vegetables, and without dangerous tree branches; to increase safety of crossing the road in front of the schools.

Numbers per year: 1.786
Population base: 14.681
121, 66 injuries per 1.000 people per year
Started year: 2004.

Produced information material, pamphlets:

From the founding, at Backi Petrovac Municipality several conferences were held on the occasion of the national day without accident with participation of partners. The conference was opened to all interested people.

The project was presented at Conference at Municipality at Backi Petrovac; at Women’s organization in Kulpin; at Women’s organization at Glozan; at Women’s organization Backi Petrovac; at meeting of primary school at Backi Petrovac; at gymnasium of Backi Petrovac; at local radio newspaper and TV.

Preliminary results of the Safe Community were presented at Safe Community Conference at Norway in 2005.

Staff:

-Prof. dr Ana Sabo,
Safe Community Project Leader, Municipality of Backi Petrovac
-Prof. Tatiana Koros
Council Chairpersson Safe Community, Municipality of Backi Petrovac

Coordinators for children and school – Suzana Pasic and Natasa Berat
Coordinator for Youth -Ivan Varga
Coordinator for Elderly- Ana Moravek
Coordinator for Handicapped persons – prof.Tatjana Koros
Coordinator for Home and Leisure – prof. Maja Boldocki
Coordinator for Traffic-Jan Vozar
Coordinator for Occupational-Milina Labat
Coordinator for Sports-Jan Hancman

Number:11

Professions part time: Medical doctors, Psychologists, Teachers, Jurists, Policemans, Students.

Organization:
National Center or Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion-Safe Community Backi Petrovac

Specific intersectional leadership group:
Municipality Backi Petrovac, Backi Petrovac Health Care Center, Private Doctors in the Community Backi Petrovac Police Station, Social Welfare Department, Red Cross, Women’s organizations, Primary schools, Gymnasium, Kindergarten, Non-government organizations, Local newspaper and local Radio TV station.

International commitments:

Study visits:Not Yet!
Participation in Safe Community conferences: Helsinki - 2004., Bergen - 2005.
Hosting Safe Community Conferences: Not yet!
Hosting ”Travelling Seminars”: Not Yet!