WORLWIDE INJURY PREVENTION: RESEARCH AND INTERVENTION CAN SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES EVERY YEAR
Adnan A. Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
"An investment in injury prevention research is an important step in better global health as well as building diplomacy. Global injury prevention is all about global security and we must take steps to invest in what we already know works and continue to invest in research to save lives."
Adnan A. Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, is working to make the prevention of injuries a major focus of global health research. Commonplace injuries such as those from road crashes, drowning, burns, violence, or falls account for 5 million deaths each year around the world, or as many people who live in the cities of Chicago and Houston combined. Hyder has spent the past decade talking to policymakers, national leaders and anyone who will listen to what he knows we can do to save lives, prevent needless and costly injuries and the disabilities that can result.
"We know that injuries are a mostly predictable and preventable global health problem. We need to do more to help countries deal with this unnecessary burden," he says. Noting that 90 percent of the burden of injuries is carried on the shoulders of the developing world, Hyder says global health leaders need to take steps to invest in what we know works and pursue research to push forward more effective solutions.
A physician born in Pakistan, Hyder's interest in preventing injury began when he became a public health researcher in 1997. He was shocked to find so many countries, rich and poor, suffering under a 10-20 percent burden of disease as a result of injury and violence. Even more shocking, he says, was that few of these countries had standard programs in place that could stem the injuries or violence.
Hyder's particular interest is road safety and child injuries. A co-author of the World Health Organization and World Bank's first global review of road traffic injuries, he notes that "one of the world's unknown leading killers is not HIV or malaria but road injuries." Continuing to call attention to this problem that has known solutions, he recently co-authored the 2008 WHO/UNICEF "World Report on Child Injury Prevention," a report Hyder says should be sounding alarms globally. More than 800,000 children worldwide, including here in the United States, are killed by injuries each year, and tens of thousands more require hospital care. Many, if not most, could have been prevented if interventions had been in place, "interventions that we know work - because of research," he says.
Hyder maintains that investing in injury prevention research is an important step in better global health and building diplomacy. "Global injury prevention is all about global security," he says. "When we invest in such things as disease preparedness systems or emergency medical systems we are getting good will from the people in those countries, and that can only be a positive thing in the long run."