Injuries: UK and international

There are a number of sources of data available on comparative injury figures for Scotland, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Trend analysis (170KB) produced by the Injury Observatory for Britain and Ireland shows that the Republic of Ireland consistently had the highest age-standardised mortality rate between 1996 and 2003, and Scotland consistently had the second highest rate. Analysis of trends in injury type across the countries of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland are also provided.

The Scotland and European Health for All (HfA) Database provides comparative mortality trend data for Scotland and countries in Europe, by gender, for the following types of injuries:

  • Motor vehicle traffic accidents
  • Suicide and Self-Inflicted Injury
  • Homicide and Intentional Injury
  • External Cause Injury and Poisoning

The Injury Database of the European Commission (EURO-IDB) has about 5 million injury cases recorded from 1986 to 2002. The plan is to have all 25 EU countries contributing to the system by 2008. The IDB is accessible to everyone, but you have to request a password from  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , first. More information on this database is available here (461KB).

A summary of the current injury statistics and surveys drawing on the above injury database is now available from the recent publication, Injuries in the European Union 2003-2005(2.96MB).

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.