[sustran] Road crashes a growing world cause of death

[Paul Barter]

Here is a clarification and proper source for the earlier report on road
crashes as a growing world cause of death.  Again this is reposted from the
alt-transp list.
-------------------------------------
From: litman at IslandNet.com (Todd Litman)
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 05:25:59 -0800 (PST)
Subject: alt-transp Road crashes as an international health problem

Forwarded from Ralph Hirsh:

>National Public Radio did a report on this subject yesterday morning which I
>heard and which may have been the one Todd Litman heard. The data in that
>NPR report were from the Global Burden of Disease and Injury (GBD) study
>currently being carried out by the Harvard School of Public Health and the
>World Health Organization (WHO), with more than 100 collaborators around the
>world. Christopher J.L. Murray directs the project at Harvard, and Alan D.
>Lopez is one of his coauthors.
>
... irrelevant stuff snipped....

>
>The Harvard/WHO study identified the 15 most important diseases or types of
>injury, in terms of "disease burden" as measured in Disability-Adjusted Life
>Years (DALYs), a unit of measurement which combines the impact of both death
>and disability. (The DALY is defined as one lost year of healthy life.) It
>ranked these top 15 diseases and injuries for the year 1990 and projected
>the rankings, in what the study called its Baseline Scenario, to the year
2020.
>
>One alarming finding, which the press picked up, is that road traffic
>accidents, ranked 9th in terms of "disease burden" (DALYs) in the year 1990,
>were projected to rise to 3rd place by the year 2020.
>
>Looking at deaths, the study found that among the ten leading causes of
>death in 1990 road traffic accidents were number 8 in developed regions and
>number 10 in developing regions. Worldwide it found that, among adults aged
>15-44, road traffic accidents were the leading cause of death for men and
>the fifth most important for women. The study points out that "The high toll
>of road traffic accidents in developing regions has received relatively
>little attention from public health specialists in the past."
>
>A summary of the full study is available on a Web site of the Harvard School
>of Public Health, and may be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format, at
>
>http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/bdu/summary.html
>
>Figure 2, showing the projected change in the rank of traffic accidents
>between 1990 and 2020, is in the summary's first section (called
>introduction). The definition of DALY is in the second section (identified
>as part 1).
>
>Ralph B. Hirsch,  Secretary General
>International Federation of Pedestrians (FIP / IFP)
>3500 Race Street
>Philadelphia PA 19104-4925
>USA
>telephone/fax +1.215.386.1270
>e-mail <hirsch at igc.org>