[sustran] fwd: Road accidents to outstrip war, HIV deaths: Red Cross

[Paul Barter]

From: C-afp at clari.net (AFP)
Newsgroups:
clari.world.asia.india,clari.world.asia+oceania,clari.news.photos
Subject: [Sm28] Road accidents to outstrip war, HIV deaths: Red Cross
Organization: Copyright 1998 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
Message-ID: <Qredcross-accidentsVRiOG_8uO.RDx-_8uO at clari.net>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 6:45:52 PDT
......
   NEW DELHI, June 24 (AFP) - Road accidents will kill or disable
more people than war, tuberculosis or HIV by 2020, the International
Red Cross said in its annual disaster report unveiled here
Wednesday.
   Astrid Noklebye Heiberg, president of the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told a news
conference here: "Traffic accidents cause at least 500,000 deaths
every year.
   "They will become the third largest cause of disability and
premature death after clinical depression and heart disease and way
ahead of war or HIV which gain more attention."
   Heiberg said the Red Cross had decided to launch its annual
report for the first time in India for two reasons -- "because urban
risks and hostilities and traffic accidents are very high in
India."
   After a 15-minute drive to the press conference, Heiberg said:
"I am lucky to be alive. The way people drive here with no regard
for lanes or red lights, the cows ... I am not surprised to see
handicapped children and people on the streets.
   "India has quite a long way to go in this."
   The report said traffic accidents had burgeoned across the world
since the first road death in 1896, with the developing world
accounting for 70 percent of all crashes.
   Around 15 million were estimated to be injured in accidents,
mostly the poor and the young.
   The report said fatality rates ranged from about 180 deaths per
10,000 vehicles annually in Ethiopia and 82 deaths in Nepal to 1.9
for Australia and Japan.
   It said in large countries such as Mexico and India road
accidents cost between two and 3.2 billion dollars a year.
   "Crashes hamper growth and progress by costing developing
countries around 53 billion dollars a year."
   Heiberg pointed out that traffic accidents "already cost the
South almost as much as all the aid they receive". She said the Red
Cross had launched several programmes to minimise the effects of
accidents.
   The report said engineering -- from car design to street lights
- -- was far more effective in curbing the number of road crashes than
efforts to change driver behaviour.
   The Red Cross chief, however, admitted that the international
body's role was limited in preventing major disasters such as
"nuclear risks ... and nuclear plants that have been exploding like
in Chernobyl.
   "These are true disasters in that they affect a large number of
people."
   Heiberg said a huge problem facing disaster relief was a sharp
fall in aid which had declined in real terms by 17 percent between
1992 and 1996.
   "Aid decline is happening in the context of expanding economies,
trade flows and foreign direct investment in the developing world;
and is being outpaced by the market."
   Heiberg said a neglected area in disasters was "emotional trauma
which takes far longer than material recovery, whether it is in the
former Yugoslavia, Rwanda or Burundi or Oklahoma City."
   She said civil war, genocide, apartheid, flooding and other
natural disasters resulted in trauma which "could be transferred
from generation to generation" and also lead to "new outbreaks of
violence."

- --=-=--
Content-Description: Help text
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
ClariNet offers photos in MIME multipart format in two resolutions, [Sm]all
and Large [Lg], posted as two articles with the same story.  Choose the one
that's best for your network connection and optionally read the other
one by following the USENET or web-browser links.  Our web site has
<A HREF="http://www.clari.net/mimeinf.html">full details on how to
use the pictures</A>.
- --=-=--