Analysis of a five year (2011-2015), trends and distribution of the burden of road traffic injuries in Uganda: a retrospective study

Introduction : globally, 1.25 million lives are lost to road traffic injuries every year. Over ninety percent occur in Low and Middle-Income Countries despite owning just about half of the world’s vehicles. In Uganda, between 2012 and 2014, about 53,147 road traffic injuries were reported by the Police, out of which 8,906 people died. Temporal and regional distribution of these injuries is not known, hence hindering targeted intervention. This study describes the trends and distribution of health facility reported road traffic injuries in Uganda from 2011 to 2015. Methods : monthly data on road traffic injuries, from 112 districts, obtained from Ministry of Health was analyzed retrospectively. The districts were grouped into ten sub regions as per Uganda Demographic Health Survey 2011 and analysis done to generate descriptive statistics. Results : a total of 645,805 road traffic injuries were reported between January 2011 and December 2015 and 2807 deaths reported between 2011 and 2014. Injuries increased more than five times from 37,219 in 2011 to 222,267 in 2014, and sharply dropped in 2015 to 57,149. Kampala had the highest 18.3% (117,950/645,805) injuries and deaths 22.6% (634/2807) whereas Karamoja had the lowest 1.7% (10,823/645,805) injuries and 0.8% (21/2807) deaths respectively. Under-fives accounted for 21.9% (615/2807) deaths, mostly females 81% (498/615). Conclusion : there was a more than five-fold increase of road traffic injuries in 2014 from 2011. Injuries and deaths were highest in Kampala and lowest in Karamoja region. It was noted that health facilities mostly received serious injuries, as such, it is likely that the burden of these injuries is higher but under reported. This data is only from health facilities, hence do not reflect deaths at pre-hospital. Concerted efforts are needed to link pre-hospital deaths to understand the burden of road traffic crashes and appropriate interventions.