'World Health Day 2004' is being celebrated under the auspices of World Health Organisation (WHO) throughout the world, including Pakistan on Wednesday, April 7 with a pledge to continue efforts for creating awareness about necessity of road safety for a healthy living.
This year's theme for the Day is 'Road Safety is No Accident'. To mark the Day, walks, seminars, scientific sessions, symposiums, and special functions will be held across the country. In Lahore, various NGOs and health organisations have chalked out an elaborate programme to mark the day in a befitting manner.
Pakistan being one of the countries having been faced with severe problem of heavy occurrence of road accidents, which results in eruption of disease and injury as a major cause to be witnessed here.
According to estimates over 1.20 million people killed and about 40-50 million injured every year in road crashes around the world.
If current trends continue, the annual number of deaths and disabilities from road accidents will have risen by more than 60 percent to No 3 on WHO's list of leading contributors to the global burden of disease and injury.
Road crashes are a huge cause of human trauma, as in some low and middle-income countries; road crash victims occupy up to 10 percent of hospital beds. Deaths from all types of injuries are projected to rise to 8.4 million in 2020 with road traffic injuries as a major cause for this increase.
'Globally, economic costs of road traffic injuries are estimated at US $518 billion per year. In developing countries, the costs are estimated to be US$100 billion, twice the annual amount of development aid to developing countries. Studies suggest that in 2002, some 50 percent of road traffic fatalities world-wide involved young adults aged 15 to 44 years, many of whom were primary breadwinners for their families', said a former senior officer in Traffic Police Punjab while talking to Business Recorder here on Tuesday.
He called for compensating the victims of road accidents by implementing the third party risk insurance scheme in letter and spirit.
According to him, travel by road in Pakistan has a variety of other risks. Roads are crowded, drivers are aggressive and poorly trained, and many vehicles, particularly large trucks and buses, are badly maintained.
Most of the roads suffer from poor maintenance and often have numerous potholes, sharp drop-offs and barriers that are not sign-posted.
Extreme caution should be exercised when travelling at night by road since many vehicles do not have proper illumination or dimmers nor are most roads properly illuminated or sign posted.
He stated that pedestrians and riders of bicycles; motorcycles and mopeds are less protected. Per kilometre travelled, they are at far greater risk than the drivers and passengers of cars and big vehicles. In all countries, he said males of any particular age are more likely to be injured in road traffic crash than females of that same age.
As children, males are more likely to play on busy roads and to run or ride bicycles out into roads without stopping to check for traffic, he said.
In 2002, the global rate of death from road traffic injuries was 19.0 per 100,000 people. The rate was 27.6 per 100,000 males and 10.4 per 100,000 females.
Males were almost three times likely as females to be killed in a road traffic collision, he added.
Older people may be less alert and agile than others may, and therefore more prone to becoming involved in road crashes. They are leas resilient, so when they are involved, older persons are more likely to die or to become seriously disabled, he added.
Every year, more than 180,000 children under 15 to year of age are killed in road crashes and hundreds of thousands are disabled for life, he said. Globally it is estimated that there are now roughly 100 million families coping with the deaths or disabilities of family members who were injured in a road traffic collision, recently or in the past. They are coping with grief for the dead and care for the disabled, he added.
He said the objectives of this year's World Health Day 2004 is to raise awareness of health impact and social and economic costs of road traffic injuries, besides stimulating debate on the possibility for road traffic injury prevention.
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