To reduce high mortality rates due to road accidents, a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Dr Anthony Osagie, yesterday urged medical doctors to promptly attend to victims.
The surgeon made the appeal at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Scientific Conference of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Ogun State chapter.
He lamented that most national hospitals in Nigeria do not have Trauma Care System to properly attend to accident victims.According to Osagie, who spoke on theme, “Road Mishaps: A Menace to Society,” the health sector needs overhauling, because doctors have the responsibility to prevent a significant percentage of deaths resulting from road accidents.
He charged medical practitioners to improve their services, saying: “As doctors we should be more concerned about saving lives, we should improve the way we attend to patients because the attention we give to patients the first few minutes they are brought to the hospital, determines the survival of such patients.”He said: “If we properly handle victims of road accidents, we may not have high mortality rate like we do now in the country.”
He commended the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) for its pre-hospital care, which actually determines the actual care that patients get at the hospitals.Osagie charged doctors on effective management of injuries, just as every local hospital should have a well-structured trauma centre.
According to him, the general problems confronting trauma management as at now include security, quackery, inadequate staffing, lack of adequate health facilities and economic hardship of the nation.
He attributed the major cause of road accidents to over-speeding. FRSC Sector Commander of the state, Mr. Adegoke Adetunji also blamed 80 per cent of road crashes on over-speeding and failure of drivers to obey traffic laws.
He disclosed that 65, 440 road accidents were recorded in the last six years with 34,170 injured and 1930 killed.“At least, 1.2 million people die every year and 60 per cent of these deaths are recorded in developing countries because we depend so much on the road transport system,” he said.The state NMA Chairman, Dr Adenike Odewabi said the conference was necessitated by the recent death of seven doctors in an accident on their way from Ekiti to Sokoto.
