Road traffic accident: A major public health problem in Ethiopia.

Abstract

One of the articles in this issue demonstrates how road traffic accident is a serious, but neglected, health problem in Ethiopia using secondary data collected by the Amhara National Regional State Police Commission from 2007-2011 (1). Fatalities due to traffic accidents are reported to be among the highest in the world. According to the WHO’s 2009 global status report on road safety, the road crash fatality rate in Ethiopia was at least 114 deaths per 10,000 vehicles per year, compared to only 10 in the UK and Ireland and 60 across 39 sub-Saharan African countries (2). In addition, the number of people injured or killed in one crash in Ethiopia is about 30 times higher than that in the US (3). Furthermore, it is sad to note that fatalities due to road traffic accidents are higher among pedestrians in countries like Ethiopia than in developed countries. For instance, 60% of the fatalities in the US account to the car drivers, while in Ethiopia only about 5% account to drivers (3). This is also supported by a recent study where the majority of fatalities were pedestrians (87%) followed by passengers (9%) and drivers (4%), among a total of 25,110 accidents and 3415 fatalities during the period 2000-2009 in Addis Ababa