May 13 2011
The WHO on Wednesday in Geneva officially launched the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020 to raise awareness of and reduce the number of traffic-related deaths and injuries worldwide, the Washington Post reports (Brown, 5/11).
According to the U.N. News Centre, road accidents are the ninth leading cause of death in the world and represent the most prevalent cause of death for young people ages 15 to 29. About 1.3 million people are killed and between 20 million and 50 million people experience non-life threatening traffic-related injuries annually, with most cases occurring in developing countries (5/11). The Guardian's "Datablog" reports that India has the highest number of recorded road deaths with 105,725, followed by China (96,611), the U.S. (42,642) and Russia (35,972) (Provost, 5/11).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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