Road accidents eat up development aid – Roland Wiederkehr

Road accidents eat up development aid – Roland Wiederkehr

500 children die every day on their way to school. 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic collisions. Between 15 and 20 more million people suffer road traffic injuries.

The WHO (World Health Organization) has declared this number of fatalities an epidemic. It estimates that if we do not stop this epidemic, it will result in 2 million deaths and 30 million injured between 2020 and 2030.

In addition, victims are hardly ever insured. Aside from the immeasurable suffering, follow-up costs of traffic accidents add up to 1 to 3 % of the gross domestic product of these countries. That’s twice the total of development aid that these countries receive!

Most leaders and citizens around the world are unaware of it: a Tsunami (3500 death toll) or the 9/11 attacks (3000 death toll) are extensively covered by the media and remain in people’s minds for months. On the other hand, the scale of these world deaths due to traffic accidents is hardly covered by the media and therefore not present in our minds.

CareCross.org and many other organizations want to change this now. I helped to make road safety to a development aim in the agenda 2030 of UNO. Now I help to reach this aim. Please support.

More about Roland Wiederkehr: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Wiederkehr

 

 

This text was published in the February Newsletter of Global Goodwill Ambassadors (GGA) on Johntext Alaska. Publisher of the Newsletter is Hans-Jürgen John, Founder of Johntext – read more