Telangana can improve road safety: World Health Organisation

Tampere (FINland): Road safety experts of the World Health Organisation said that as Telangana was the youngest state in the country it had the highest scope for better road safety law enforcement. They expressed the hope that the TS government would work towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of reducing by 50 per cent the road mishap deaths in India by 2020.

Talking to DC at the ‘Safety 2016-the 12th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion’ on Tuesday, WHO expert and Coordinator of Unintentional Injury Prevention Dr Margie Peden said if the TS government could focus on law enforcement and reduce the number of accidents it would become a role model for other states. The meet was jointly conducted by the World Health Organisation and government of Finland.

"The UN has set a goal to reduce road traffic deaths around the world by 50 per cent by 2020. As the newest state in India the Telangana government should strictly enforce road safety laws which can reduce deaths and injuries,"  said Dr Margie Peden from WHO. He was involved with a project in Cyberabad some years ago.

Talking to journalists at the conference, Dr Etienne Krug, director, WHO, Department for the Management of Non-communicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention, said that over five million people die annually due to road accidents, violence, drowning, suicide and other mishaps across the world. Road accidents claim over 1.2 million lives.

The safety 2016 conference brought together over 1,200 leading violence and injury prevention researchers, practitioners and lawyers from 110 countries. The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare and WHO jointly organised the four-day conference and hosted delegates from around the world.