Is the Pedestrian an Endangered Road User? A Descriptive Account of Pedestrian Musculoskeletal Injuries
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Date
2010Author
Kigera, JWM
Naddumba, EK
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
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Background: Trauma is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Africa. Road traffic crashes are
causative in majority of these cases. Pedestrians are vulnerable to injury in all types of collisions.
This paper examines the injuries sustained by pedestrians.
Design: Prospective study.
Setting: Mulago Hospital, the National Referral Hospital in Uganda.
Patients and Methods: We prospectively recruited all musculoskeletal trauma patients who presented
between August and December 2009 to casualty and the emergency ward and identified the patient
characteristics and the nature of injuries sustained.
Results: Road Traffic Crashes (RTC’s) were the leading cause of trauma and pedestrians were involved
in 40% of all RTC’s. Motor vehicles and motorcycles were responsible for almost equal number of
cases involving pedestrians. Pedestrians were younger than other R TC victims and sustained
majority of the injuries over the weekend. The lower limbs were the commonest site of injury with
fractures of the tibia and fibula being the commonest injury.
Conclusions: Pedestrians are vulnerable to injury in road traffic crashes and are bearing the brunt of
these injuries. There is need to educate pedestrians on essentials of safety on the roads. Motorists
and cyclists should also be sensitised on respect for other road users. There is a need for pedestrian
walkways to reduce pedestrian injuries.
URI
http://profiles.uonbi.ac.ke/jameskigera/publications/pedestrian-endangered-road-user-descriptive-account-pedestrian-musculoskelehttp://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/47321
Citation
EAOJ; Vol. 4: September 2010Publisher
College of Health Sciences, University of Nairobi
Collections
- Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) [10378]