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Decade officials move road traffic safety onto U.N. agenda
The General Assembly was expected to vote on holding a special meeting on road safety in 2004.
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The Bone and Joint Decade, working with several international organizations, succeeded in putting road traffic injury prevention on the next United Nations General Assembly agenda.
As of press time, the general assembly was to take a vote on whether to hold a special meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on April 14, 2004, in support of World Health Day. The day’s theme next year is road safety.
Mark L. Rosenberg, MD, member of the decade-initiated U.N. Global Road Safety Steering Committee, said getting road safety onto the U.N. agenda was originally expected to take up to five years.
“By convening the right players and fostering a successful collaborative effort, we have been able to accomplish this — and more — in less than one year,” he said in a written statement. “This is the result of the efforts of U.N. Ambassador Fuad Al-Hinai from Oman and the U.N. Global Road Safety Steering Committee,” Rosenberg said.
Decade international steering committee member Bruce D. Browner, MD, of Farmington, U.S.A., told Orthopaedics Today, “This issue is one which really deserves the attention of the U.N. and its agencies, the World Bank and the member state governments.” What helped move things forward was Al-Hinai’s sensitivity to the problem, which is significant in Oman, and work by John Flora, director of the World Bank sector that deals with road safety, he said.
“The purpose of getting this placed on the U.N. agenda was so the world community recognizes it as a significant public health, transport and justice problem,” said Browner, who is a member of the Orthopaedics Today Editorial Advisory Board.
Time for world recognition
Following the general assembly’s autumn session, member countries are expected to develop plans for assessing the magnitude of their national road traffic problem, gather crash statistics and realize the extent of their human and economic cost. “Once that occurs, there should be a lot of sharing of ideas between developed and developing countries, but coordination at the national level is needed,” Browner said in a phone interview.
Individual countries will have to establish a national agency responsible for overseeing the problem because it crosses all sectors: transport, health, justice and education, he said.
To what extent worldwide decade national action networks and orthopaedic organizations get involved remains to be seen.
“Brazil’s Sociedade Brasileira de Ortopedia e Traumatologia (SBOT) is a great model for what a professional orthopaedic society can do if it gets really interested. They do lobbying and public education campaigns and work with the justice department on regulations,” he said.
Orthopaedic surgeons can get directly involved in the multisector and multidisciplinary prevention strategy now underway through advocacy, education and volunteerism, Browner noted. “Like the SBOT, orthopaedic associations around the world could become more active as lobbyists and advocates … pushing for stronger safety regulations and more investments, better road designs.”