The United Nations (UN) has proclaimed the years 2011–2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety.1 The related public health actions are of particular importance to those living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).2 These actions are more focused on highly populated LMICs where development needs have been leading to increased motorisation, and consequently road traffic injury burden.1 While fatality counts and motorisation may be important aspects in deciding action priorities, such categorisation is likely to neglect a noticeable number of countries currently facing a wave of political violence and conflict.3

One such country is Afghanistan where people's livelihood has been ravaged by ongoing conflicts during the last 3 decades.3 ,4 In 2009, WHO estimated that Afghanistan had one of the highest traffic fatality rates worldwide leading to over 10 000 road fatalities per year.2 However, due to the conflict situation, traffic safety problem has not been highlighted in the disease burden reports concerning Afghanistan.3 Our analyses of injury-related hospitalisation data from three different provinces of Afghanistan clearly showed that road disease burden competed with violence-related injuries (see table 1). Though the contribution of traffic injuries in overall injury burden was moderate (15.1% in 2010) in Kunar province which is in East of Kabul and the epicentre of current conflict, such contributions were relatively higher in the provinces of Laghman (41.4%) and Samangan (27.1%). Even more interesting was the fact that traffic injury hospitalisations increased in all three provinces from 2008 to 2010.

Some authors in the past have warned that violence-related prevention can be overprioritised in the public health action agenda.5 Our results clearly indicated that traffic injuries continue to contribute substantially in the injury burden in conflict affected regions. In our opinion, traffic safety advocacy in the conflict affected countries like Afghanistan should not be overlooked as this can undermine the UN and WHO agenda to reduce traffic injuries in coming years.