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Abstract
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The 10th of April, 2020 marked the end of United Nations' Decade of Action for Road Safety. The target for this Decade was to reduce global road fatalities by 50% of the projected deaths of around 1.9 million -to below 900,000 deaths. However, by the year 2016 we saw the global road fatality toll rise to 1.35 million - and we still have around 1.35 million deaths per year.
Road trauma rates vary considerably with the income levels of countries. "With an average rate of 27.5 deaths per 100,000 population, the risk of a road traffic death is more than three times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries where the average rate is 8.3 deaths per 100,000 population." The United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC), established in 2004 under the leadership of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has been working hard to redress this imbalance. The 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety was held in Stockholm in February, 2020. In the WHO Director- General's opening remarks, Dr Tedros said, "As low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) develop, they are in a position to avoid the costly mistakes made in the past by high-income countries."
The 3rd Ministerial Conference on Road Safety culminated in a renewed enthusiasm to raise the global commitment to action for road safety. The Conference produced a statement setting a target of reducing road deaths by 50% by 2030 and specifying 12 road safety performance targets. Sadly, the timing of this statement coincided with the advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Like most public health threats, COVID-19 will no doubt affect LMICs more intensely than high-income countries (HICs.) Moreover, it may well overshadow the road death and injury pandemic.
Language: en |