Contact with living things

Injuries caused by contact with living things include bites, stings and envenomation from animals and plants, along with unintentional person-to-person contact.

Contact with living things is the fifth leading cause of injury hospitalisations and the thirteenth leading cause of injury deaths.

Contact with living things is a common cause of injury hospitalisations but results in few deaths.

The highest rates of injuries were among:

Causes of injury

In 2023–24, hospitalisations most often resulted from the following causes (Figure 1):

• bitten by dog (9,691 cases, 36.1 per 100,000 population)
• hit, struck, kicked, twisted, bitten or scratched by another person (5,807 cases, 23.0 per 100,000 population)
• bitten or struck by other mammals (5,330 cases, 19.0 per 100,000 population)

Figure 1: Number and age-standardised rate of injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things, by cause, Australia, 2023–24

Notes:

1. ASR is the age standardised rate per 100,000 persons.
2. Only causes resulting in more than 100 hospitalisations in 2023–24 are shown. For a comprehensive list of all causes, refer to supplementary data tables.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database and ABS National, state and territory population.

For more detail, see supplementary data tables.

Types of living things can be further categorised to indicate whether venomous or not. Injury hospitalisations related to venomous animals represented about 7% of all contact with living things hospitalisations (for records where venomousness was known).

Figure 2: Number of injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things, by venomous category, Australia, 2023–24

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database.

Trends over time

The age-standardised rate of injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things has increased from 101.3 to 123.4 per 100,000 population over the past decade (Figure 3). Between 2017–18 and 2023–24, the rate increased by an annual average of 2.5%.

Figure 3: Number and age-standardised rate of injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things, by financial year, Australia

Notes:

1. Bars represent numbers of hospitalisations, lines represent ASRs.
2. ASR is the age-standardised rate per 100,000 population.

Source: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database and ABS National, state and territory population.

The number of deaths caused by contact with living things has generally remained stable over time, fluctuating between 24 and 36 deaths per financial year over the past decade. Age-standardised rates are not presented due to small numbers of deaths. (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Number of deaths caused by contact with living things, by financial year, Australia

Note: Bars represent numbers of hospitalisations

Source: AIHW National Mortality Database.

Trends varied depending on the type of living thing involved (Figure 5). Among the top five causes of injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things, hospitalisation rates from being bitten or crushed by snakes, unknown whether venomous or nonvenomous, changed the most (13% increase) in 2023–24 compared to the previous 5-year average.

Injury hospitalisations from being bitten by dog(s) showed the second largest increase (12%), and have generally increased steadily over the past decade, with age-standardised rates more than doubling between 2014–15 and 2023–24.

Hospitalisations caused by unintentional human-to-human contact have mostly remained stable over the past 10 years, while hospitalisations resulting from contact with venomous spiders have steadily decreased over the same period.

For more detail, see supplementary data tables.

Seasonality

In 2023–24, injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things were higher than the previous 5-year average for most months of the year, especially in the autumn months of March to May (Figure 6).

What injuries occur?

Body part injured and type of injury

In 2023–24, the three body parts most frequently injured in living things-related injury hospitalisations (Figure 7) were:

• wrist and hand (10,325 cases or 38.3 per 100,000 population)
• head and neck (6,295 cases or 23.4 per 100,000 population)
• hip and lower limb (excluding ankle and foot) (4,921 cases or 18.3 per 100,000 population)

Open wounds were the most frequent type of injury sustained (50.3%, 16,525 hospitalisations). This was followed by fractures (19.8%, 6,532 hospitalisations).

For more detail, see supplementary data tables.

Activity while injured and place of occurrence

61.5% of activity records and 51.2% of place of occurrence records were missing for hospitalisations caused by contact with living things. Therefore, activity or place of occurrence are not further described for this injury cause.

Severity

There are many ways that the severity, or seriousness, of an injury can be measured, including:

• number of days in hospital
• time in an intensive care unit (ICU)
• time on a ventilator
• in-hospital deaths.

Hospitalisations caused by contact with living things were less severe than injury hospitalisations overall. The average number of days in hospital was lower than the average for all hospitalised injuries in 2023–24, while the percentages of cases that included time in an ICU or continuous ventilatory support were both lower. The rate of in-hospital deaths was also lower for injuries caused by living things compared to all injury causes (Table 1).

Age and sex

Injury hospitalisation and death caused by contact with living things differ between males and females, especially for certain age groups (Figure 8).

For injury hospitalisations in 2023–24:

• 57% of cases were males (18,945 cases)
• the age-standardised rate for males (143.6 per 100,000) was 1.4 times that for females (102.4 per 100,000)
• people aged 15–24 had the highest hospitalisation rate.

For injury deaths in 2022–23:

• 82% of deaths were males (23 deaths)
• people aged 65 and above had the highest death rate.

 Age and sex trends over the last decade show that:

• injury hospitalisations caused by dog bites have increased across all age groups and sexes, with the largest increase observed in adults (aged 25 to 64), and the smallest increase in those aged 0–4
• injury hospitalisations caused by contact with venomous spiders have decreased over the decade across all age groups and sexes, although there was an increase in 2023–24
• rates of injury hospitalisation caused by contact with venomous snakes or lizards reached their highest point in the decade across most age groups in 2023–24

First Nations people

Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (First Nations people):

• there were 2,548 injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things in 2023–24 (a crude rate of 247.3 per 100,000)
• males were 1.5 times as likely as females to be hospitalised (295.3 and 198.9 per 100,000 population)
• hospitalisation rates were highest among adults aged 25–44 (Figure 9)

Figure 9: Injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things among First Nations people, by age and sex, Australia, 2023–24

Note: Bars are number of hospitalisations, and the line graph represents crude rates (per 100,000 persons). 

Sources: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database and ABS Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Comparison between First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians

First Nations people, when compared with non-Indigenous Australians, were 2.1 times as likely to be hospitalised for injuries caused by contact with living things in 2023–24 (Figure 10).

Between 2017–18 and 2023–24, the rate of injury hospitalisation due to contact with living things for First Nations people has increased by an annual average of 4.2% compared to an average annual increase of 2.3% for non-Indigenous Australians.

Figure 10: Age-standardised rates of injury hospitalisations caused by contact with living things, by Indigenous status and financial year, Australia

Notes:

1. Age-standardised rates per 100,000 population.
2. ‘Non-Indigenous people’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.

Sources: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database, ABS National, state and territory population, and ABS Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

The rate of injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things was highest among the 25–44 age group for First Nations people, and the 15–24 age group for non-Indigenous Australians (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Crude rates of injury hospitalisations due to contact with living things, by Indigenous status and age group, Australia, 2023–24

Notes:

1. Rates are crude per 100,000 population.
2. ‘Non-Indigenous Australians’ excludes cases where Indigenous status is missing or not stated.

Sources: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database, ABS National, state and territory population, and ABS Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

For more detail, see supplementary data tables.

State and territory

The states and territories with the highest injury hospitalisation rates caused by contact with living things in 2023–24 were:

• Northern Territory (284.1 per 100,000)
• Queensland (151.9 per 100,000)
• Australian Capital Territory (144.6 per 100,000) (Figure 12).

Injury death rates cannot be reliably calculated in most states due to low numbers. In Figure 12, we show the number of such injury deaths in each state and territory in 2022–23.

Figure 12: Age-standardised rate of injury hospitalisations (2023–24), and number of injury deaths (2022–23), due to contact with living things, by state of usual residence, Australia

Notes: 

1. ‘State and territory’ refers to the state and territory of usual residence for the individual.
2. Age-standardised rates per 100,000 population.

Sources: AIHW National Hospital Morbidity Database, AIHW National Mortality Database, and ABS National, state and territory population.

Remoteness

Areas of Australia which are more remote tend to have higher rates of hospitalisation and death from injury than less remote areas. 

Socioeconomic areas

People living in the most socioeconomically disadvantaged areas of Australia, compared to the least socioeconomically disadvantaged were 1.4 times as likely to be hospitalised for injuries caused by contact with living things in 2023–24 (Figure 14).

Data details

• Technical notes: how the data were calculated
• Data tables: download full data tables
• Glossary
  
  

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