Child abuse: report of three cases from Khamis Mushayt.

The problem of child abuse was first described by Kempe et al. in their landmark article entitled “the battered child syndrome,” which was published in 1962. Since then, the problem has had increased recognition worldwide, and legal solutions and state-enforced statutes have been put in place to combat this menace in many Western countries. In the US, child abuse is the second most important cause of serious head injuries and deaths after motor vehicle accidents. There are only a few published reports of child abuse in Saudi Arabia, the majority of them from tertiary care hospitals in Riyadh, and a recent one from Jubail. In this communication, we report three cases of child abuse seen in Civil Hospital, Khamis Mushayt, in the year 1999. This is the first report of child abuse to be presented from this region of Saudi Arabia.