Interact J Med Res. 2023 Jan 31. doi: 10.2196/40883. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Despite significant improvement in the last decade, road trauma remains a significant contributor to deaths in Vietnam. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated public health measures which had an unforeseen benefit on road trauma in high income countries. We investigate if this reduction was also seen in a low to middle income country, Vietnam.
OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government policies to address it, impacted on road trauma fatalities in Vietnam. We also compared this impact with other government policies intended to road trauma in the preceding 14 years (2007 to 2020).
METHODS: COVID-19 data was extracted from the Vietnamese Ministry of Health (MoH) database. Road traffic deaths from 2007 to 2021 were derived from the Vietnamese General Statistical Office (GSO). We used Stata software 17 for statistical analysis. Poisson regression modelling, with the logarithm of the national population of Vietnam of each year included as an offset, was used to estimate trends in rates of road fatalities from the annual national mortality data for the period 2007-2021. The actual change in road traffic mortality in 2021 was compared with calculated figures to demonstrate the effect of COVID-19 on road trauma fatalities. We also compared this impact with other government road toll reduction policies for 14 years (2007 to 2020).
RESULTS: Between 2007 and 2020 the number of annual road traffic deaths had more than halved from 15.3 to 7.0 per 100,000, an average reduction of 5.4% per annum. We estimated that the road traffic mortality rate declined by 12.1% (95% CI 8.9 to 15.3%) in 2021 relative to trend. The actual number of road trauma deaths fell by 16.4%. This reduction was largely seen from August to October 2021 when lockdown and social distancing were in force.
CONCLUSIONS: In 2021, the road traffic death reduction in Vietnam was 3 times greater than the trend over the preceding 14 years. The public heath response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam was associated with a third of this reduction. It can thus be reasonably concluded that government policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a 4.3% decrease of road traffic deaths in 2021. This has been observed in High-Income Countries but was demonstrated by us for the first time in a Low- and Middle-Income Country.
PMID:36718815 | DOI:10.2196/40883
