Road traffic accident: An emerging public health problem

Regmi Sadiksha I still vividly remember the day, 7th August, 2010, when I was heading towards Chitwan on a microbus. At somewhere Muglin the moving bus suddenly got stopped and I could see at a few meters ahead a horrible scenario. A bike had been crashed with a taxi and the spot was red with blood. The person riding bike was spot dead while the other who was riding with him had been rushed to the hospital. This is just a single event which I saw on that day, but there occur numbers of such road accidents everyday all around the world and we are unaware about them. Road traffic accident is a major public health issue as it leads to death, injuries and disabilities which are the health burdens to the society. It deteriorates the socio-economic status due to cost of long term care for the injured or the loss of income due to disability or death in the family. The death toll due to road traffic accidents is increasing day by day. Worldwide, an estimated 1.3 million people are killed in road crashes each year and as many as 50 million are injured. Road crashes currently rank with tuberculosis and malaria as major killers in global terms. If significant preventive actions are not taken, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by 2020 road trauma will rank as the sixth biggest cause of death. Nepal, even though a small country, yet not untouched by the problem of road traffic accident. According to the latest WHO data published in April 2011 Road Traffic Accidents Deaths in Nepal reached 2,527 or 1.70% of total deaths. Nepal comes in 127 position in the rank of countries with highest number of road accidents. When we talk about the causes of road accident the main important factors include - poor road network and engineering, excessive speed of motors, overloaded vehicles, mixed traffic, haphazard parking of vehicles, young and inexperienced drivers, driving after taking alcohol e.t.c So if we want to reduce this public health problem, everybody from the government level to the civil society should act joining hand in hand. The government should design and construct the road which provides the best traffic flow. Everybody should follow the basic traffic rules and laws either he/she may be a pedestrian or a driver.

The public health practitioners has even more important role to play in addressing the problem of road traffic injuries. We should pay attention to all the three phases of road traffic injury prevention, acute care and rehabilitation. We should bring awareness in people about road safety which is a serious part of health problem. We should generate and spread knowledge with the aim of preventing road traffic crashes and reducing the severity of an injury in case of a crash by conducting innovative research, translating research into effective interventions, and training new and future leaders from diverse background.