Men, not women, are the weaker sex

Melbourne, Apr 21 (ANI): It has been made official: Women are not the weaker sex.

According to a myth-busting study, boys are more prone to becoming seriously ill or injured than girls.

The conclusion was drawn from an Australian study into childhood trips to hospital emergency departments.

The study took in a year's worth of under-18 emergency room visits across Australia and New Zealand.

Of the 350,000 children taken to the hospitals, 45 per cent were girls and Dr Jason Acworth says the disparity could not be explained away as "boys being boys".

"We looked at whether it was just related to boys being more likely to injure themselves, because they certainly are overrepresented when it comes to injuries," News.com.au quoted Dr Acworth, the study's lead author, from the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane, as saying.

"But even when you take injuries out and look at illness, they still made up a greater proportion.

"We're getting 55 per cent (boys) versus 45 per cent ... all the nurses in my department think it is because males are the weaker sex," he added.

The study took in all child emergency room visits during 2004 across 11 paediatric and general hospitals. While boys outnumbered girls, the study also showed the additional dangers faced by children in their first years of life.

The average age of all presentations was 4.6 years.

"In the first year of life that's the real danger, those kids made up almost 20 per cent (18.5 per cent) of all the presentations," Acworth said.

"The next group we looked at, age zero to four, they made up just under 60 per cent (59.7 per cent). So most of the kids were in the pre-school age group," he added. (ANI)