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Affiliation
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Department of Community Medicine, Dr. RPGMC, Tanda, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India. |
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Abstract
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Went through with interest article entitled “Public health crisis of road traffic accidents in India: Risk factor assessment and recommendations on prevention on behalf of the Academy of Family Physicians of India” published in Journal of Family medicine and primary care (2019; 8:775-83). The authors deserve credit for coming up with recommendations and thereby attracting attention toward road traffic injuries. The Academy of Family Physicians of India needs to build on these recommendations and come out with a framework document on building competency in injury prevention across all healthcare settings in India. As is apparent, developing competency in injury prevention will hold the key to reduce burden because of injuries.
To a complete document already published by the authors in Journal of Family medicine and primary care, this author suggests a few points here to be used in developing a framework depending on our experience with injury research.
The first point is regarding the development of injury registries. Injury registries focusing on Road Traffic Injuries only might lead to a compartmentalized approach to injury prevention. Instead, registering all types of musculoskeletal injuries into a database across medical colleges in India can be an initial step in mitigative research on injuries. This could function on lines similar to hospital-based cancer registries currently functioning across medical colleges in India. An uniform protocol for registering injuries will be useful in understanding pattern, frequency, and trends. Our own experience in this regard has been rewarding as the outcome of this has helped us better understand the pattern of injuries in our part of India. We also found the exercise requiring lesser resource and training, and therefore, feasible in terms of execution.
The second point is regarding the development of prevention models. Research focusing on developing models or matrices for prevention of injuries needs to be taken up. I doubt, there has been a serious effort in this regard, and we continue to depend heavily on Haddon's work in this regard. Locally, relevant models will pave the way in better understanding of injuries and, therefore, prevention. The Academy of Family Physicians of India in collaboration with emergency medicine experts need to assume a leadership role in this as most of the action in preventing injuries will be around families.
In addition, last and important, developing competency in injury prevention will require the active involvement of other important stakeholders such as the lawmakers, educationist, environmentalists, medical professionals, and technocrats among others. Probably, it is time to strengthen the existing competencies and develop newer ones ...
Language: en |