Trauma centres along crash-prone highways will save lives

Besides leaving thousands of people dead or handicapped, the lives of many families get affected due to the loss of many earning hands falling victim to road traffic crashes.

The National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) has called on government and all stakeholders to improve post-crash responses by providing trauma care centres and first aid posts along crash-prone highways to reduce crash-related deaths.

The NSRA suggested that the trauma and health centres along the highways should be well resourced to cater for emergency cases while sustaining the lives of victims.

He noted that if trauma care centres or first aid posts are around crash-prone highways, some crash victims can survive.

It has been reported that government has secured €56.1 million (€56,153,500) facility to construct two Trauma Centers at Akyem Anyinam on the Accra-Kumasi highways in the Eastern Region and Obuasi in the Greater Ashanti Region.

The facility will also be used to construct an Emergency Center at the Enyiresi Hospital and the Rehabilitation of the Obuasi Health Centre.

The construction of these important health facilities will help save more lives during fatal accidents on these accident-prone roads.

Trauma care is one of the most important components of the health sector.

Injury management is crucial to lowering the burden of morbidity and mortality in Ghana.

Delays in transportation of patients to hospitals, inaccessibility, lack of adequate equipment and supplies and a small number of trained doctors at hospitals, contribute to the high death toll caused by trauma.

An effective response through well-established pre-hospital care in first few hours of injury may decline trauma mortality.

It is a recognized approach of trauma care that by providing first aid, initial life support and replacement of fluids, within first hour of the injury increases the probability of saving the life of accident victims.

The most important factor of this strategy is to establish a network to provide initial treatment to the victim within first hour of the injury.

By doing so, the chance of disability and death from road accident can be avoided to a greater extent.

Strict adherence to the World Health Organisations’ response time to crashes which should be within 10 minutes should be a priority.

Government resourcing the National Ambulance Service and the Ghana Red Cross Society with logistics and ensuring that personnel have the adequate capacity to attend to crash victims on time is crucial in this agenda.

The trauma system in Ghana seems to leave much to be desired.

The health system as a whole in Ghana needs to prioritize injury management with regards to surveillance, prevention, pre-hospital care, human resource, record keeping and access to care.