Deadly Roads Are Not Just a Metaphor

by Mara Gordon · 2009-06-18 09:15:00 UTC
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(photo credit: richardmasoner)

Take a guess at the answer to this question: What kills 1.3 million people worldwide each year, 90% of them in developing countries?

The hot-button issues probably crossed your mind: AIDS, perhaps malaria. If you're a global health junkie (and regular reader of this blog), maybe you'd guess tuberculosis. When we think about large numbers of mortalities, we tend to think of the "big name" diseases. Editor's note: If you are a very diligent reader of this blog, you might already know the answer.

The answer, however, isn't even a disease, let alone one with a Global Fund and celebrity spokespeople to address it. It's traffic accidents. That's what kills hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world every year.

Earlier this week, the World Health Organization released its first Global Status Report on Road Safety. The statistics are chilling, especially considering how little international attention this issue receives. Very few countries have comprehensive road safety laws, and those that do rarely enforce them. Perhaps the scariest statistic of all: the WHO predicts that traffic fatalities will be the fifth leading cause of death by 2030.

Why doesn't road safety garner the same kind of developed-world sympathy - and aid dollars - that infectious diseases do? I've done a lot of thinking about this, particularly because road accidents have directly affected me and several of my friends in Africa.

The WHO statistics indicate, by any account, a bona fide public health threat. Yet it's rare to encounter any international NGOs working on the issue, let alone idealistic aid workers trucking off to new parts of the globe to fight for better seatbelt laws instead of HIV medication.

A few thoughts:

  • Road accidents happen at home, too. A car crash doesn't seem exotic to an American in the same way that many tropical diseases do. I'm not trying to undermine the importance of prevention and treatment for infectious diseases, but sometimes the ordinary problems don't seem as noble to fix.

  • We can't deliver a commodity to treat it. As a donor, it feels good to imagine your money putting a tangible object in somebody's hands: an anti-malarial bednet, a nutritional supplement for a child. We can't prevent car accidents with a deliverable product.

  • Addressing the problem means uncovering many, many more. Road safety in poor countries is a result of many complex, interconnected factors - safety standards for vehicles, unenforced traffic laws, shortages of trauma centers. A drug can't cure it.

Take a look at the WHO report and let me know what you think. Where do we start?

Mara Gordon has worked in public health in Tanzania and in Botswana. She originally hails from Washington, D.C.
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