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Abstract
Purpose To determine the impact of a paediatric road traffic injury (RTI) prevention programme in urban Sub-Saharan Africa.
Setting Dares Salaam, Republic of Tanzania.
Methods Household surveys were conducted in catchment areas around 18 primary schools in Dar es Salaam, Republic of Tanzania; the catchment areas were divided into control and intervention groups. Collected data included basic demographic information on all school-aged household members and whether or not they had been involved in an RTI in the previous 12 months, and, if so, what the characteristics of that RTI were. Based on these findings, a separate road safety engineering site analysis and consultation with the communities and other stakeholders, an injury-prevention programme was developed and implemented, consisting of infrastructure enhancements and a site-specific educational programme. The programme was initially implemented at the intervention schools. After 1 year, data were collected in the same manner. The control group received the same intervention after follow-up data were collected.
Results Data were collected on 12 957 school-aged children in the baseline period and 13 555 school-aged children in the post-intervention period, in both the control and intervention communities. There was a statistically significant reduction in RTIs in the intervention group and a non-significant increase in RTI in the control group. The greatest reduction was in motorcycle–pedestrian RTI, private vehicle–pedestrian RTI and morning RTI.
Conclusion The programme demonstrated a significant reduction in paediatric RTI after its implementation, in very specific ways. This study demonstrates that for a reasonable investment, scientifically driven injury-prevention programmes are feasible in resource-limited settings with high paediatric RTI rates.
- pediatric
- pedestrian
- road traffic injury
- injury prevention education
- Africa
- low- and middle-income countries
- traffic calming
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Footnotes
Contributors AP, SK, KR, JW and AG all made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work; drafted the work, revised it critically for important intellectual content; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Furthermore, all the authors listed ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work will be appropriately investigated and resolved.
Funding This work was supported by the FIA Foundation by a donation earmarked for Road Traffic Injury Prevention research.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Not required.
Ethics approval This study was formally approved by the United Republic of Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement All data collected during this research are openly available to bona fide researchers by contacting the corresponding author. There are some minor data points collected that were not presented in this manuscript because they were either not relevant in final analysis or, in retrospect, there were some inconsistencies in their collection.