Stephen Lewis calls on the UN to recognise that road traffic injuries are a global issue requiring UN action.
Stephen Lewis is Chair of the Board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. He was UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Mr. Lewis was Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and he is a former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations.
“Road safety is ignored because it is not on the global agenda.”
“When one thinks of the numbers who die or the numbers who are disabled as a consequence of road accidents, it immediately elevates it to the global agenda. The numbers are huge and they are so overly pronounced in developing countries, not least because road construction is so haphazard and so disgracefully irresponsible.”
“So how do you raise an issue like road safety which is taking such a staggering number of lives, costing so much disability and overburdening health services?”
“Well, one of the ways you do it is to find countries that will actually raise road safety in the context of human rights or of economic development in one of the major committees of the United Nations General Assembly. You will be amazed the way it can take off once it has some traction. Then you can begin to develop some momentum to give road safety a profile. It has an immediate resonance with all the major global issues, from health to education to economic development. And by God, this is the time to do it, because everybody is now aware of global health and when you are talking about road accidents you are talking about the terrible decimation of global health.”
“It’s not just a report, it is using the report to make the argument and bring it to the attention of the world. It isn’t enough to do it in the World Health Organisation. The meeting of the Ministers of Health at the World Health Assembly is not enough. The only way to get it on the agenda internationally is to pummel the United Nations into submission and that requires four or five countries that will make it a cause celebre.”
“It is not only preventable, but there is so much information available. We now have the studies; we know the consequences; we know that we can prevent most of it through intelligent construction and intelligent public policy. How is it possible that this issue hasn’t even got a glimpse of the global agenda, let alone being dealt with? You are talking about millions of people being killed and injured, and we’re continuing to discuss it from time to time in individual countries or within modest conferences, gathered together.”
It is time that the leaders with any sensitivity or with any gumption rallied around this issue and I for one would like to see it happen and happen fast”.
Stephen Lewis was talking to Richard Stanley.