Road accident injuries, deaths, cost Ghana $230m annually

Ghana spends up to $230 million every year treating injuries and traffic fatalities.

To make matters worse, there are fewer than 80 orthopaedics in the country, limiting access to emergency treatment.

At a training workshop on trauma reporting for journalists from the Ashanti and three regions of the north, Senior Specialist on Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Dr. Dominic Konadu Yeboah, called for more awareness and investment in the sector to reduce the incidence.

“Over 230 million is lost annually to trauma in Ghana, and we also have figures that suggest that in a period of 1 year, we have over 5,000 reported fractures so the situation that pertains is more serious than what we see so we want to encourage dissemination of information on trauma and all injuries,” he said.
In doing so, we get to appreciate the enormity of the problem, the disabilities, the deaths that this problem is costing us as Ghanaians, and economic loses so that we place it on top of our healthcare agenda and give it the prominence it deserves,” he added.

Statistics from the Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service indicates that road accidents in the country continue to increase with many more people dying from road crashes.

More men than women perish in road crashes with some being pronounced dead on arrival at health facilities.

Among the challenges with injuries from road accidents are delays in transporting road accident victims to nearby health facilities and lack of knowledge in handling such victims or administering first aid that could buy victims more time before reaching a nearby hospital.

2,341 killed in 2018 in road accidents; 795 are pedestrians

Data compiled by the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service has revealed that, the total number of commuters killed in road traffic accidents in 2018 recorded a 12.76% jump over the figure for 2017.