The Head of Trauma and Orthopaedics at the Komfo Anorkye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Dr Dominic Konadu-Yeboah, has disclosed that an estimated five million people die annually out of injuries from road accidents globally.
Most of such deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, including Ghana.
Trauma resulting from road traffic crashes is one of the leading causes of deaths and disabilities in Ghana and often involve young people within the productive age of 15 to 49 years.
Dr Konadu-Yeboah said this at the beginning of a three-day training workshop organized by the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons for journalists from Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions, on how to report on Trauma and Orthopedic cases.
It was organized in collaboration with AO Alliance, a development non-profit non-governmental organization and aimed at improving care for the injured in middle and low-income countries.
The session was also to help achieve AO Alliances project objective. The project is dubbed: “Paediatric Fracture Solutions of Ghana Project”.
The project seeks to reduce and prevent disability, morbidity and mortality from paediatrics trauma related cases through education, and improving clinical care provided by doctors, nurses, allied healthcare workers, first interveners and primary care givers.
Dr Konadu-Yeboah stressed the need for journalists to help intensify education at preventing road traffic accidents to minimise it impact on Ghana and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) three and six.
The goals focus on reducing road traffic injuries and deaths by 2020.
He said Ghana’s health care systems must be re-organised to place trauma care high on the health agenda in order to hit the SDG targets.
The Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Tema General Hospital, Dr Francis Odei-Ansong, said to enhance appropriate trauma care, the AO alliance has established residency training centres at Cape Coast and Tamale Teaching Hospitals.
They are equipped among other things with logistics to establish independent departments.
He said 240 children have so far benefitted from the project in both KATH and the Cape Coast Hospitals.
Journalists were encouraged to use their media platforms to advocate and create public awareness of trauma cases in the country to minimize its occurrence.
