Persons using assistive technology might not be able to fully access information in this file. For assistance, please send e-mail to: mmwrq@cdc.gov. Type 508 Accommodation and the title of the report in the subject line of e-mail.
World Health Day --- April 7, 2004
"Road Safety" is the theme for World Health Day, April 7, when hundreds of organizations will host events to
raise awareness of traffic injuries as a global health problem. In the United States, improvements in roadway and vehicle design and in driver and passenger behavior have resulted in a steady decrease in the rate of motor-vehicle--related
fatalities during the previous 75 years (1). Despite these improvements, each year motor-vehicle crashes cause approximately 40,000 deaths in the United States and approximately 1 million deaths worldwide
(2,3).
Many programs and policies exist to improve road safety and reduce injuries. These include strategies to reduce
high-risk behaviors (e.g., alcohol consumption and speeding); promote use of cycle helmets, safety belts, and other protective devices; and protect pedestrians and cyclists by increasing their visibility and separating them from
motorized traffic.
The World Health Organization is responsible for
coordinating World Health Day activities and will release
its World Report on Road Traffic Injury
Prevention (4), underscoring the magnitude of the problem and global prevention strategies.
Additional information about road safety events and activities is available at
http://www.who.int/world-health-day/2004/en.
CDC. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2001. Available at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars.
Peden M, Scurfield R, Sleet D, et al. World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2004 (in press).
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text
into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version.
Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or
the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables.
An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800.
Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to
mmwrq@cdc.gov.
