Injury death rates higher

DEATH rates from injury, including suicide and traffic accidents are higher here than any of our near neighbours, a new survey has found.

A comparison of injury mortality across the Republic, the North, England, Scotland and Wales for the period 1996-2003 found the Republic ranked well ahead of Britain except when it came to death rates from homicide.

In this category, Scotland topped the table, followed by the North, where death rates from injury more than doubled in 1998 in the wake of the Omagh bomb.