Report: New 'oil roads' could lead to spike in road accidents
The traffic police and ministry of Health should brace themselves for more road accidents if the revelations contained in a new report are anything to go by.
A report compiled by Makerere University School of Public Health predicts that the country will experience more accidents especially in the Albertine region when the oil extraction process starts.
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The report titled: Post Crash Care Along Oil Regions notes that there are insufficient health facilities in the region to handle the accidents.
"Many people don’t know the basic first aid for accident victims we end up losing many of these before they get to the hospitals," said Dr Olive Kobusingye, head of Trauma, Injury and Disability Unit at the School of Public Health.
She said the health facilities on those roads don’t have skilled medical personnel and equipment to handle accident victims.
While police is always the first respondent to aid evacuation of patients to health facilities they are equally challenged said Assistant Commissioner of Police Charles Ssebambulidde revealed.
"We need to improve on how to ensure these victims survive. There are those who die because they don’t get post crash care, most police officers are only trained on basic first aid, but even where you find the police officers with capability to help a victim, we have no means of transport but the emergency vans commonly known as Kabangali.
Ssebambulidde said the people in the oil region are not used to heavy traffic flow while some of them use motorcycles but with no driving skills.
Elly Kaigwa the OC traffic Kajjansi highlighted that most accidents happen during the night between midnight and 6.00am and within this time frame it is hard to even get help even from the public.
According to the 2018 Annual Traffic and Road Safety Report released last year more than 3,000 people died in the 13, 244 road accidents that were recorded.
Nearly half of those affected were pedestrians and while 918 were motorists.
