Epidemiology of Injuries from Road Traffic Accidents in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Epidemiology of injuries from Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) has become a major public health concern worldwide. However, unlike developed or high-income countries, many developing countries have made very little progress towards addressing this problem. Nonetheless, there are ways to strengthen the reduction of injured persons that will help to lower the toll from road traffic accidents. The purpose of this paper was to elucidate ways to accomplish these goals in the context of Lagos State, Nigeria. The reportedinjuries from road traffic accidents in the 20 Local Government Areas of Lagos State were compared using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The result showed that for the two factors, Local Government Areas and years, the F-calculated of 21.34 and 9.77 respectively were higher than the F-tabular of 1.57 and 1.46 respectively at 0.05 level of significance. It then implies that the means for reported number of injured from road accidents for each of the two factors were significantly different. The result of the multiple regression analysis was 0.61. This implies that the proportion of variation in the dependent variable (injured from road traffic accidents) explained by the independent variables was 61%. Based on the findings, recommendations were proffered on how to reduce the phenomenon of injuries from traffic accidents in Lagos State.

Keywords: Injuries; Traffic; Accidents; Epidemiology; Lagos State