Elizabeth Sackey presenting copies of the report at the event
The Retrospective Hospital Report on Road Traffic Death and Serious Injuries, conducted by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) with support from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Safety (BIGRS), has highlighted the need for the country to develop an efficient road crash data system to obtain realistic counts of deaths that occur on the roads.
According to the study, the development of an efficient road crash data system will not only help with accounts, but will also aid in the understanding of the magnitude of deaths and injuries and track trends overtime to inform interventions to save lives.
The hospital report, which is an assessment of road traffic deaths and serious injuries in major referral hospitals in Accra from 2020 to 2021, revealed that a total of 559 road traffic deaths occurred in Accra during those years, which was more than twice of the reported deaths made by police.
The assessment, which was conducted at the Accident Centre and Mortuary Departments at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), the Greater Accra Regional Hospital and the Trauma Surgical Emergency Unit and Mortuary Department of the 37 Military Hospital, also described the epidemiologic profile of individuals fatally injured from road traffic crashes to provide a basis for re-estimating road traffic mortality in the city.
Mayor of AMA, Elizabeth K.T. Sackey stressed the importance of data and urged road safety stakeholder institutions including the AMA, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Roads and Highways, the NRSA, Department of Urban Roads, the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department, among others to use the report effectively to guide actions to improve safety.
The Mayor also mentioned that a higher proportion of deaths were as a result of head injuries with most victims being motorcyclists.
She made this known at the launching the report to commemorate 2023’s UN Global Road Safety Week in Accra on the theme, “Rethink Mobility.”
The Acting Director General of National Road Safety Commission (NSRA), Mr David Osafo Adonteng, commended the AMA and BIGRS for initiating the hospital study report, which would help with the provision of data to support the agencies to come up with measures to reduce road crashes.
By Abigail Atinuke Seyram Adeyemi