Abstract

Injuries account to one-third of all disabilities and road traffic injuries (RTI) contribute nearly half of them in India. An estimate states that in India 3.5 million people suffer from injury related disability and among them 2 million people are due to RTI related disability. Very little information is available on injury related disability. So the present study was designed with an objective to assess the proportion of disability among the injured persons and to describe their profile.

A cross section study was conducted using multi stage sampling covering 3003 population. Only moderate to severe injuries were assessed. Among them disability present even after 30 days of injury was assessed using WHODAS 2.0 tool. Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test and Fisher exact test were used for evaluating statistical significance.

Proportion of injury related disability (lasting even after 30 days of injury) was 44 (29.7%). Majority 33 (75%) were in the age group of 15–59 years and 30 (68.2%) males. All were unintentional injuries 44 (100%). Common place was street/highway 18 (40.9%) and external cause was fall and fall of object 24 (54.5%). Most common type of physical nature of disability was walking with a limp 18 (40.9%). WHODAS scores for injury related disability was high when compared to non disabled (p<0.01). Family breakup (p=0.025) was the important social impact. Expenditure incurred by disabled person was high compared to non-disabled person (p=0.043). The overall expenditure (p<0.01), direct (p<0.01) and indirect expenditure (p=0.032) were high among the disabled people.

Proportion of injury related disability was 29.7%. Walking with a limp 40.9% was the most common type of physical nature of disability. Significant social and economic impact was seen among those who were disabled following injury.