Abstract
BackgroundGlobally, about 1.25 million people die annually from road trafficcollisions. Evidence from global safety report shows a decreasing trend of road traffic injury indeveloped countries while there is an increasing trend in many developing countriesincluding Ethiopia. This study is aimed at assessing factors affecting injury severity levels of road traffic collision victims referred to selected public hospitals in Addis Ababa based on the Haddon Matrix.MethodsAhospital-based cross-sectional study designwas implemented to randomly select a total of 363 road traffic collision victims. The collected data was cleaned andentered into Epidata version 3.1 and exported to SPSS Version 21 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate logisticregression models were used to examine the association between explanatory and outcome variables.ResultsA total of 363 individual sustained road traffic injuries were included to the study. Theprevalence of severe injury among road traffic accident victims was 36.4%. The following variables were significantly associated with increased injury severity: motorbike rider or motorbike passenger without helmet, adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 4.7(95% CI: 1.04–21.09); driving under the influence of alcohol, crude odds ratio (COR) 2.64(95% CI;1.23–5.64); victim with multiple injuries, AOR 3.88(95% CI: 2.26–6.65); vehicle size, AOR 2.14(95% CI: 1.01–4.52); collision in dark lighting condition, AOR 1.93(95% CI: 1.01–3.65); collision in cross city/rural, AOR 1.95(95% CI: 1.18–3.24) and vehicle occupant travelling unrestrained on the back of a truck, AOR3.9 (95% CI: 1.18–12.080). On the other hand, victims extricated at the scene by health care professional, AOR 0.33(95% CI: 0.13–0.83); victims extricated at the scene by police AOR 0.47(95% CI: 0.24–0.94); strict traffic police control at the scene of the collision, AOR 0.49(95% CI: 0.27–0.88) were significantly associated with less severe injuries.ConclusionsFindings reported in this paper suggest the need forimmediate and pragmatic steps to be taken to curb the unnecessary loss of livesoccurring on the roads. In particular, there is urgent need to introduce road safety interventions.
Highlights
About 1.25 million people die annually from road trafficcollisions
Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents This study found that about three fourth 278(76.6%) of those who sustained road traffic collision (RTC) were males
Age group 21 to 30 years were mainly affected by RTC; followed by age group 12 to 20 years, and they account for 141(38.8%) and 74(20.4%) respectively (Table 2)
Summary
About 1.25 million people die annually from road trafficcollisions. Evidence from global safety report shows a decreasing trend of road traffic injury indeveloped countries while there is an increasing trend in many developing countriesincluding Ethiopia. The problem is anticipated tobecome the fifth leading cause of death with the annual death toll reaching 2.4 million by the year 2030 owing to an increased motor vehicle ownership and use associated with economic growth in developing countries [3, 4]. It results in 3% loss of the gross domestic product worldwide and up to 5% in low and middle-income countries [1]. This trend will go further with thenoticeable disparity between developed and developing countries [2, 3]
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