Injury control and safety promotion
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Inj Control Saf Promot · Mar 2003
Review Comparative StudyStrengthening care for injured persons in less developed countries: a case study of Ghana and Mexico.
In all countries, the priority for reducing road traffic injuries should be prevention. Nonetheless, there are low-cost ways to strengthen the care of injured persons, that will help to lower the toll from road traffic. The purpose of this review was to elucidate ways to accomplish this goal in the context of less developed countries. ⋯ This would define the trauma treatment services that could realistically be made available to virtually every injured person. It would then address the inputs of human resources, physical resources, and administration necessary to assure these services optimally in the different geographic and socioeconomic environments worldwide. Finally, it would identify and target deficiencies in these inputs that need to be strengthened.
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Inj Control Saf Promot · Mar 2003
Review Comparative StudyTraffic-related injury prevention interventions for low-income countries.
Traffic-related injuries have become a major public health concern worldwide. However, unlike developed or high-income countries (HICs), many developing or low-income countries (LICs) have made very little progress towards addressing this problem. Lack of the progress in LICs is attributable, in part, to their economic situation in terms of their governments' lack of resources to invest in traffic safety, cultural beliefs regarding the fatalism of injuries, competing health problems particularly with the emergence of HIV/AIDS, distinctive traffic mixes comprising a substantial number of vulnerable road users for whom less research has been done, low literacy rates precluding motorists to read and understand road signs, and peculiar political situations occasionally predominated by dictatorship and non-democratic governments. ⋯ Almost all interventions and strategies that have been proven effective in HICs will need to be evaluated in LICs and particular attention paid to the effectiveness of enforcement measures. It behooves LIC governments, however, to ensure that only standard, approved safety devices like helmets are imported into their countries. Additionally, LICs may need to improvise and innovate in the traffic safety technology transfer.