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PW 2046 Pedestrians are the major concern of road traffic injuries in bangladesh: findings from a nationwide survey

Background In Bangladesh, thousands of pedestrians are dying on the roads every year. However, the real burden of RTI focusing on pedestrian safety has neither been recognized nor been addressed properly by the policy makers in Bangladesh due to lack of reliable data. Objective The study aimed at exploring the current scenario of road traffic injuries and involvement of pedestrians in Bangladesh to generate information-base for the policy makers. Methodology A nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted between March and June 2016. Multi-stage cluster sampling was used to select required number of households. Sampling strategy was based on probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) methodologies with separate urban and rural samples. Data from 2 99 216 household residents was available for analysis of which 1 00 842 were children aged 0–17 years. 64 data collectors and 16 supervisors were engaged in the study. Data was collected on tablets using a custom data entry program. Once data was transferred to the server, the data was validated, and exported to SPSS v21 for analysis. Results In the year before the survey, an estimate 22 437 deaths were recorded due to road traffic injuries i.e 14.4/100,000 population. Over 3.4 million were injured (2163.7/100,000 population) of which 80 448 were permanently disabled, over 220 each day. Pedestrians comprises around one third of all RTI deaths while a clear male predominance in most age groups for both death and injuries were found. Pedestrians contributed around 14% of the permanent disabilities due to road traffic injuries. Infants, younger children (<9 years) and older people (60+years) became more frequent victims as pedestrians. Conclusion Findings of this study could an insight for the policy makers of Bangladesh and other low- and middle-income countries for future policy guidance. We have to act without any delay to address the alarming involvement of pedestrians in road traffic injuries.