In spite of increase in the number of vehicles in recent years, injury from road traffic accidents declined by 40 per cent in the country. This is primarily due to intensified enforcement by Road Safety and Transport Authority, Royal Bhutan Police and better roads infrastructure. This is further expected to improve as stakeholders step up its regulations in coming years.
In less than eight years since Bhutan became a party to the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, the number of road accidents has reduced. In the country, 10 per cent of the non-communicable diseases death is due to injuries, mostly road traffic accidents.
“Road traffic accidents have reduced; we have targeted 10-20% reduction in 2020. But as of now since 2011, we see that the road traffic accidents have reduced by almost about 40 per cent,” said Dr. Karma Lhazeen, the Director of Department of Public Health. “We have achieved that probably due to good enforcement, better roads that have been constructed by the relevant sectors.”
Also to achieve this target, WHO SEARO emphasised the importance of gathering more and better data on road safety incidents. The WHO indicates good data allows authorities to analyse and understand the factors causing road crashes, as well as to devise and implement cost-effective solutions. However, the challenge at present is due to gaps in the information that are collected in the country.
“In terms of challenges, sharing of information between the sectors because RSTA they collect a set of information, Health Ministry collect on the injury and deaths, there are different sources of information,” added Dr. Karma Lhazeen, which deprives them of concrete information needed to assess the decade of action impacts. However, the relevant stakeholders (RSTA, Police and Health Ministry) are working towards improving the system of information sharing.
As per the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals, countries are striving to halve the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020.
