Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) disproportionately bear the high burden of injuries, with 90% of all deaths due to injury occurring in these countries. In India, data on pre-hospital care of the injured is either absent or incomplete. The Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Road Safety Program is a five-year (2010- 2015) project implemented by a consortium of partners to improve road safety in 10 LMICs. The risk factors being addressed in India are reduction of drink driving and increasing helmet use. Up to 16 months of data from two large hospitals in Hyderabad (population 8 million) were retrospectively reviewed to examine the burden of road traffic injuries. Unfortunately, key information on the following was incomplete: alcohol use; location and activity of patient at the time of injury; nature of collision; vehicle in which patient was traveling; striking vehicle and type of road user. Information on the presence of safety equipment like helmet and seatbelt, and occurrence of prehospital care was uniformly absent. To overcome the information gap, round-the-clock injury surveillance was established in July 2013 in Hyderabad and in June 2014 in Visakhapatnam.
Objective
To describe the challenges and lessons learned in establishing road traffic injury surveillance in two large government teaching hospitals in two States of South India, with solutions that eventually helped streamline the process.