Global Surgery & Anesthesia
8 Kids on a Motorcycle
With 1.3 million total deaths from road traffic accidents each year — or nearly 3,500 per day — road traffic injury is a global epidemic comparable to malaria or tuberculosis, according to the WHO. Pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycle riders make up almost half of those deaths.
Ninety percent of road traffic deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, though fewer than half the world’s registered vehicles are there.
This immense burden of injury reinforces the need for developing trauma and prehospital care systems capable of reducing morbidity and mortality from accidents.
The WHO launched the Decade of Action for Road Traffic Safety kicks in May. Here is a link to the action plan. http://www.who.int/entity/roadsafety/decade_of_action/plan/english.pdf
The plan includes the following five pillars:
1. Building road safety management capacity;
2. Improving the safety of road infrastructure and transport networks;
3. Improving the safety of vehicles;
4. Promoting safe behavior among road users; and
5. Improving trauma systems for post-crash care.
Here is a short video from Pakistan of a man carrying his eight children home from school on his motorcycle. It would be comical if it weren't so frightening. Aamir Khan took the video with his iPhone while driving home from work at the Indus Hospital one afternoon last spring.
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