Doctors frustrated they’ve made no headway in getting motorcyclists to wear helmets

Trauma centre data shows that road accidents are underreported by people.

KARACHI: Karachi never learns. Even though it has been statistically proven that motorcycle riders are at the highest risk of road accidents, they still don’t wear their helmets.

“Educating the masses about safety precautions, like telling them to wear helmets, has proved to be a waste of time,” remarked a frustrated Dr Rasheed Jooma, while speaking at a seminar on trauma care on the third and last day of the 22nd Biennial Pakistan Islamic Medical Association convention at the Expo Centre on Sunday.

The neurologist, who is the principal investigator at the Road Traffic Injury Research and Prevention Centre at Jinnah hospital, attributed the increasing number of road accidents to a parallel increase in vehicle registration in the city.

A centralised database for trauma patients was started in 2006, drawing data from five large hospitals within the city, each of which have a trauma centre. Of nearly 200,000 trauma cases that have been analysed over the last five years, fatalities from road accidents have been on a downward trend. About 76 per cent of these incidents result in only minor injuries, which generally entail light treatment and a quick discharge from the hospital.

Data shows that motorcycle riders and pedestrians are the two groups that suffer the most. Head and neck injuries are responsible for 46 per cent of fatalities. Surprisingly, these kinds of accidents reach their peak during Ramzan. Shahrah-e-Faisal and the National Highway are among two corridors where the bulk of accidents take place.

“We came across nearly 32,000 trauma patients in 2010. However, during the same time period, the police reported seeing hardly over 1,000 such cases,” said Jooma. The discrepancy is explained by people’s reluctance to report accidents. If motorcycle riders wore helmets up to 600 road fatalities could be avoided each year.

“Influencing the road environment” is an important way to reduce road accidents and the city government has acted on the centre’s findings to construct more overhead bridges.

Dr Junaid Razzak, the chief executive officer of Aman Health, argued for a centralised response system to better tackle major road accidents, bomb blasts or natural disasters. It would be along the lines of the 911 helpline in the US. Confusion about taking the injured to hospitals leads to a loss of lives. “Studies show that the administration of CPR within five minutes can increase survival rates by as much as 50 per cent.” Razzak called for a standardization of ambulances across the city.

Dr Saeed Minhas, an associate professor of orthopedics at JPMC, lamented that trauma care has been a neglected part of medical care in the country. While trauma is the third most common cause of death, Pakistan’s young medical professionals seem to be ill-prepared to handle these types of cases. “Medical education over here is more theory-centered,” he said. A survey held at JPMC and Civil Hospital, Karachi in 2008 found that 52 per cent of post graduates had no idea about properly handling trauma cases.

Of the 31,567 trauma cases brought to five hospitals in the city in 2010, JPMC responded to 44 per cent, thus sorely trying its staff at the trauma department.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2012.