Road crashes, leading cause of young people’s death globally –WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed that the leading cause of death among young people globally, especially those within the age brackets of 15 to 29, is road crashes.

The global institution revealed this yesterday during a media training for about 35 journalists representing different countries of the world, who had won its fellowship for road safety reporting at the ongoing global conference on road safety in Brasilia, Brazil.

The global body said auto crashes leads other causes of death among this category of people and that it is closely followed by other causes such as suicide, HIV/ AIDS, homicide, and maternal diseases, among others.

Speaking at the forum, the Director of the WHO’s Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention, Dr. Etienne Krug, said the world cannot afford to continue to lose its future to avoidable challenges like auto crash. Krug, who added that globally, the world loses about 1.2 million people annually to road crashes, said the essence of the conference on road safety was to ensure that by 2020, the death rate is reduced by 50 per cent.