Injuries

Countries should fight public health threats with the same vigor they use to tackle terrorism, WHO warns in a roundup of the top health challenges of the next decade.   Highlights from the list (in no particular order): 

One day last summer after I returned home to Mongolia, my uncle knocked frantically at the door. He stormed inside, gasping for air. He had been diagnosed with cancer a few months earlier and was now struggling to breathe. We needed to get him to the hospital right away.…

In a rush to deliver Amazon packages, the driver crashed into a car stopped at a light, killing a 9-month old. He belonged to Amazon’s vast contractor network that a ProPublica investigation found is responsible for 60 accidents with injuries, including 10 deaths, since…

In the last 2 decades, more than 30 countries moved from low-income to middle-income status, a billion people were lifted out of poverty, and there were major reductions in maternal and child mortality globally. Despite this progress, middle-income countries, where over 70…

The encouraging news is that even as global population and vehicles on the roads are increasing, road traffic fatalities are leveling off.

Among young women in Bangladesh, scarves called ornas are fashionable—and deadly.   When the women hop in electric rickshaws, the trailing fabric can get caught in the spinning motor behind the driver and cause severe neck injuries.   Most drivers and passengers have no…

For the first time in America, dying of an opioid overdose is more likely than dying in a vehicle crash, according to a National Safety Council report. Surging overdose deaths are part of an unsettling upward trend in preventable, unintentional injury in the past 15 years…

The latest WHO Global road safety status report documents uneven progress on traffic deaths—which have climbed to 1.35 million a year. The report found progress in 48 middle- and high-income countries thanks to robust road safety initiatives. However, no low-income country…

NEW YORK—The commitment of Mohammed Adjei Sowah, the mayor of Accra, Ghana, to make the streets of his city safer is more than a campaign promise. It’s a mission, borne of personal experience. He knows all too well the hazards of road travel in the city of 2 million. In…

Had the van that smashed into a truck on a Mexican highway, killing 13 and injuring 8, been manufactured for Canada or the US, the wreck might have been less deadly.