The assessment which was supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) described the epidemiologic profile of individuals fatally injured from road traffic crashes to provide a basis for re-estimating road traffic mortality in the city.
Conducted at the Accident Centre and Mortuary Departments at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), the Greater Accra Regional Hospital and the Trauma Surgical Emergency Unit and Mortuary Department of the 37 Military Hospital, the study linked the police and health sector data on recorded casualties.
The report revealed a total of 559 road traffic deaths in Accra between 2020 and 2021 and recommended post-crash care, policy implementation and interventions to reduce the fatalities on the roads of Accra.
The study highlighted the need to develop good road crash data systems to get more realistic counts of deaths, better understand the magnitude of deaths and injuries and track trends over time to inform interventions to save lives.
Launching the report, at an event to commemorate this year’s UN Global Road Safety Week in Accra on the theme: “Rethink Mobility.”
Mayor Sackey stressed the importance of data and urged road safety stakeholder institutions including the AMA, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Roads and Highways, the NRSA, Department of Urban Roads, the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department, among others to use the report effectively to guide actions to improve safety.
She commended the BIGRS for their technical support and was hopeful the report would “inspire national and local government, as well as other stakeholders who can influence road safety as we develop national and local action plans and targets for the Decade of Action.”
She noted that a higher proportion of the deaths within the period from hospital records indicated injuries to the head and that most of the victims were motorcyclists and cyclists.
She noted that the new Hospital Study Report being launched estimated that there were 559 road traffic deaths in Accra during the same period, more than twice the number of reported deaths by the police.
Mr David Osafo Adonteng, the Acting Director General, of NRSA, commended the AMA and BIGRS for initiating the hospital study report, which would help with the provision of data to support the agencies to come up with measures to reduce road crashes.
The Mayor of Accra after the launch presented copies of the report to stakeholders present.