12 hospitals join in to curb accident mortality rate

Uniting for a cause

With India recording the world’s highest road crash mortality cases, 12 hospitals have joined hands to examine 10,000 road accident victims to learn the mortality rate, need for complicated surgeries and the risk of infections following a traffic accident.

The study is a part of a global exercise involving 40 clinical sites from 18 countries that aims at identifying important interventions that could potentially reduce morbidity and mortality in trauma patients in developing countries, including India, by 2018. As many as 52 Indians die every hour in various accidents that include traffic accidents, drowning, poisoning and accidental fire.

But the absence of a large-scale systematic study on road accident victims has turned out to be one of the factors restraining the government to have an effective policy on interventions. The international orthopaedic multi-centre study seeks to bridge this gap.

The observational study is rolled out in eight hospitals, which have already chosen 1,468 patients. All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, and the two branches, Christian Medical Colleges in Vellore and Ludhiana, are among the Indian organisations participating in the study.

“We will find out the mortality rate following hospitalisation. Also, we will find out the complications and the nature of surgeries as well as infection risks following an accident,” Director of the injury division at the George Institute, Australia, Rebecca Ivers, told DH after sharing details of the study at the ongoing World Trauma Congress here on Friday.

Earlier, the researchers carried out a pilot study on more than 4,000 patients, which also looked at the response time in public and private sector hospitals. However, the ongoing study is a bigger one.

“It is a collaborative project involving researchers from 40 clinical sites in 18 countries with over 40,000 participants. The partnership will encourage policy development as well as research, training and design of future low-cost, evidence-based interventions in trauma patients,” the institute said.