Citation

Hyder AA, Ghaffar A. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 2002; 56(9): 719.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

11707477

PMCID

PMC1731817

Abstract

We greatly appreciate the attention brought to the growing problem of road traffic injuries in your journal and especially welcome the focus on socioeconomic differentials in the distribution of such injuries. However, we feel that the impact of road traffic injuries is far greater in the developing world and feel the need to raise the following issues for consideration by colleagues around the world.

1) The loss of healthy life from injuries (measured in terms of disability adjusted life years per 100 000 people) is four times greater in low to middle income countries than in high income nations. Moreover, fatality rates from road traffic injuries are highest in the developing world, especially Africa.

2) Empirical work is now being done in the developing world to understand the burden of road traffic injuries and its distribution related to population characteristics. Our work at national level in Pakistan has demonstrated that injuries are the fifth leading cause of loss of healthy life, and the second leading cause of disability.

3)We have conducted one of the first nationally representative injury surveys in Pakistan focusing on this neglected public health issue. (Ghaffar A, Hyder AA, Masud TI. The burden of road traffic injuries in developing countries: the 1st national injury survey of Pakistan. Public Health 2004; 118(3): 211-7.)  The survey indicates that 70% of childhood injuries occurred to children whose mothers had no education, and this variable was used to reflect some measure of social and economic status. In addition, the relative risk of transport injuries was three time higher in those with manual labour as a profession, compared with those in the service sector.

Such work from the developing world indicates the great need for better data on road traffic injuries, and especially disaggregated data that permit subanalysis. It is therefore critical that researchers in developing countries ensure that their study designs include aspects of equity analysis.

Language: en