Make Roads Safe campaign: child road deaths and injuries have reached epidemic proportions

Road crashes are the leading cause of child injury worldwide, with 260,000 children killed and 10 million injured on the roads every year, a new report by WHO and Unicef says today (10).

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Chairman of the Make Roads Safe campaign, welcomed the WHO/Unicef World Report on Child Injury Prevention and called on governments to commit to a global Decade of Action for Road Safety to reduce the toll of death and injury.

Lord Robertson said:

“This report is a wake-up call on child road deaths. Road traffic injuries in developing countries have reached epidemic proportions and a coordinated response is urgently needed. If we are serious about halting the rise in child road injury the international community must agree a decade of sustained action between 2010 and 2020.”

The Make Roads Safe campaign is calling for a Decade of Action for Road Safety to tackle the worldwide road deaths epidemic which takes the lives of 1.3 million people and injures over 50 million each year. The Decade of Action would follow the precedent set by the UN Decade to Roll Back Malaria with a coordinated global effort to help countries tackle the growing road death toll.

The campaign is supported by public figures including Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Sonia Gandhi and celebrities including campaign ambassador Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, Michael Palin and film director Oliver Stone. Make Roads Safe is calling on governments attending the first UN global Ministerial Conference on road safety in Moscow in November 2009 to agree action to reduce by 50% the projected increase in road deaths to 2020.

Notes to editors:
- Photos of Bill Clinton, Michael Palin, Oliver Stone and Michelle Yeoh in support of the Make Roads Safe ‘Decade of Action’ are available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/makeroadssafe/

- For further information visit www.makeroadssafe.org

Contact: Avi Silverman, Make Roads Safe campaign 0044 7967229374