UN calls for international debate on road safety crisis.

Abstract

A UN General Assembly resolution adopted on 5 November has called for a debate among governments, UN agencies, WHO and the World Bank, on the global road safety crisis. A plenary meeting of the 191-member Assembly devoted solely to road safety, planned for April 2004, will coincide with World Health Day and the launch of the first ever World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. The meeting next April is intended to increase awareness at a high level of the magnitude of the road tragic injury problem. The UN's involvement in the problem in such a major way began earlier in the year with the first ever General Assembly resolution on road safety. Adopted in May and sponsored by 56 countries, it called for a report on the crisis by the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. Annan's report, presented in August, drew attention to the seriousness of the problem which sees over 1.2 million deaths annually resulting from road traffic crashes--the vast majority of which occur in low- and middle-income countries--and called for urgent action. "To date, road safety has received insufficient attention at the international and national levels," Annan mid the Assembly. "This has resulted in part from a lack of information on the magnitude of the problem and its preventability, a fatalistic approach to mad crashes and a lack of political responsibility." Annan's message and the involvement of the UN in road safety has received strong international support. The European Union, addressing a plenary meeting of the 58th General Assembly on 22 October, said that it "believes that saving human lives through an effective road safety policy is a difficult challenge but also a moral obligation for all member states." In the European Union alone, more than 50 000 people are killed each year and more than 150 000 are disabled for life. In response to the UN Secretary-General's report, the latest resolution calls for a plenary meeting of the Assembly on 14 April and also invites governments, the President of the General Assembly, the UN Secretary-General, the Director-General of WHO the President of the World Bank, the Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund and the Administrator of the UN Development Programme to address the Assembly on the issue. The only other health topics to have been discussed in the General Assembly plenary are HIV/AIDS and malaria. "The plenary discussion called for in this latest General Assembly resolution will be a historical event," said Dr Etienne Krug, Director of WHO's Department of Injuries and Violence. "It offers a unique opportunity to create the political will needed to address this major public health crisis at a global level." The discussion has been planned in connection both with World Health Day on 7 April 2004, whose theme is road safety, and with the release of the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. …