Abstract

In a collaborative effort by the WHO and the Ministry of Health, national injury surveillance system has been collecting data from injury cases admitted to sentinel hospitals since last decade. Revitalization was done with broader objectives of utilization of data for prevention of major injury causes and improving quality of acute trauma care in 2016 where secondary data from national level official statistics were also collected in order to reflect burden of injuries with epidemiological information. National level statistics on road safety showed increasing number and deaths per 1 00 000 populations from traffic injury with increasing number of motor vehicles during last decades. Injury surveillance data supported these findings that traffic injuries contributed the highest admission and deaths (52% and 63%) among 17 707 reported severe injury and 1036 dead cases admitted to sentinel hospitals during last year. More than 70% of severe traffic injury and 69% of dead cases were from motorcycle related injuries. Regarding the risk factors, 18% of severely injured drivers and 24% of deaths reported history of alcohol use before being injured giving case fatality rate of 1.6. Median age of the drivers was 32 years, ranged from 11–71 years old, 88% of drivers were male, 47% were unskilled labours, 17% was agricultural workers and 10% was students. Out of 6056 severely injured motorcycle riders, 67% did not wear helmet giving case fatality rate of 4.5, mostly with head injury. The percentage of victim not wearing helmet was higher for passengers then drivers (73% Vs 66%) indicating promotion and enforcement on helmet wearing needs to focus on both drivers and passengers. Findings suggested to strengthen and expend road safety measures for the community together with improving quality of trauma care in hospitals at all states and regions to save lifes of the people.