Fall 2004 archive of past newsletters

World Health Day 2004

The number of road traffic injuries continues to grow at an alarming rate, creating a major global health problem. This year, World Health Day was dedicated to road safety and the prevention of traffic injuries.

On World Health Day, April 7, 2004, the World Health Organization and the World Bank launched the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. This report represents the current epidemiological knowledge of the traffic injury problem and offers science-based evidence and solutions to reduce and prevent these injuries. The report forms the foundation for planned activities of the WHO in each of the WHO regions that will help reduce the unacceptable toll of traffic injuries and death.

Worldwide, deaths from road traffic injuries are the tenth leading cause of death for all age groups and represent 2.2 percent of worldwide mortality. For each death there are at least 100 serious injuries, many of them resulting in long-term or permanent disabilities. In low- and middle-income countries—such as those in Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Latin America—road traffic injury fatalities are increasing at an alarming rate, and by 2020 the World Bank estimates that there will be over 3 million road traffic deaths per year, and road traffic injuries will move ahead of other disease problems as a cause of death.

Like many other diseases, road traffic injuries and deaths disproportionally impact the developing world. In 1990, an estimated 1.2 million people died of road traffic injuries worldwide, and nearly 88 percent (nearly one million) of these deaths were in low-income countries. In every region of the world, death rates from traffic injuries are higher in low-income countries than in high income ones.

There are solutions to the road safety problem, although no single blueprint for road safety exists. Countermeasures that may work in one situation or in one country may not work elsewhere. Solutions need to be tailored to the situation and the effectiveness of these interventions needs to be thoroughly evaluated in that situation.

Editor’s note: For a copy of a summary of the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention, please click here (1.9 Mb PDF). Additional information on World Health Day 2004 - including the World Report in various languages - is available on the WHO web site. A summary of helmet findings and recommendations from the report is also available (358Kb PDF).

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