Road Injuries in 18 Countries – Methods, data sources, estimates of the national incidence of road injuries

Reliable estimates of the incidence and burden of road injuries are essential inputs for prioritizing national safety strategies. While population-based injury surveillance systems are obviously the best source for such information, it is also widely recognised that such infrastructure is unlikely to be established in most of the world for several decades. There is an urgent need for analystical tools that can be used to derive reasonable estimates from a wide range of existing sources, including hospital records, police reports, health surveys, death registers, among many others. Thus harvard University was commissioned by the World Bank Global Roa Safety Facility to develop an injury metrics framework for deriving best estimates of the burden of road injuries in information-poor settings and to implement this framwork in 18 countries. The project provides the basis for improved estimates for road injuries produced as part of the 2010 Global Burden of Disease and Injury Study.