Road deaths in Africa on the rise
2013-03-14 16:07
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Geneva - Africa in particular is losing the fight against
road accidents, which kill more than a million people worldwide each year, a UN
World Health Organisation (WHO) report showed on Thursday, calling for stricter
laws to help turn around the trend.
"We are not all equal before road traffic
crashes," Etienne Krug, who heads the WHO's department of violence and
injury prevention, said ahead of the report's launch, cautioning that road
safety seemed to be getting worse in about half of the world's countries.
The WHO "Global status report on road safety
2013" showed that rapidly motorising middle-income countries, especially
in Africa and also the Middle East, were seeing the highest number of deaths.
This was linked to the failure of legislation, enforcement
and the protection of so-called "vulnerable road users" like
pedestrians and cyclists to keep up with expanding car use, it said.
In Africa, 24.1 of every 100 000 people die in traffic
accidents, compared to just 10.3 per 100 000 in Europe, which has the lowest
death toll, the report showed.
In Africa, "we see economic development, new roads
being built, cars being imported and new drivers taking to the roads, and this
is not matched with the necessary safety measures," Krug told reporters in
Geneva.
He described situations in numerous African villages
where dirt roads are replaced by tarmac, and suddenly "cars are driving
four or five times faster through the village, but nothing is done to
facilitate walking [and] there is no easy way to cross it in a safe way, so
deaths and injuries go up," he said.
According to the 318-page WHO report, which includes data
from 182 countries accounting for about 99% of the world population, some 1.24
million people die globally in road accidents each year while as many as 50
million more are injured.
Traffic accidents are thus the eighth leading cause of
death worldwide, and the top cause among people aged 15 to 29.
Without action, they are set to become the fifth leading
cause of death among all age groups by 2030, the report warned.
- SAPA
