Africa: Road
Traffic Accidents
(15/05/2006)
Baroness Tonge:
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord
Harrison, on securing this debate, which has an interesting title. Having
done quite a stint in international development in the other place, I am
often asked by ex-constituents and friends what is the most important
factor in development—the key, the one thing I would do first. You go
through a huge list: poverty and hunger; education; maternal and child
health; HIV/AIDS; malaria; tackling clean water; empowerment of women; and
corrupt governments—so rightly mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord
Simon. I am afraid that my list would not have included road traffic
accidents. Yet when I looked into it, I could see the point of this
debate. It is very important and has to be added to the list.
Two of the most developed
countries in the world, the USA and Israel, have a huge number of road
traffic accidents and deaths from such accidents. In any month in the USA,
more people are killed than on 9/11. This is worth remembering because the
impact on the USA must be huge, but the impact on developing countries of
a proportional number is extraordinary. In any year in Israel, more than
10 times more deaths will occur from road traffic accidents than in the
worst year of suicide bombings during this recent intifada—a
terrible statistic. With this sort of record, it might be argued that a
sign of development in a country is its number of road traffic accidents.
It is an appalling record for the world.
There are 800,000 or so
deaths from road traffic accidents in low and middle-income countries, and
20 million to 30 million injuries. That means people already in poor
circumstances who are disabled for the rest of their lives. During my
travels, I often though that there could be nothing worse than being
disabled in a developing country. You have no facilities and no
consideration at all, and 20 million to 30 million people are disabled by
road accidents. Africa is by far the worst place.
It is also a huge economic
cost to those low and middle-income countries, some $64 billion to $100
billion a year. The total bilateral overseas aid amount to those countries
is only $106 billion a year, quoting 2005. NePAD estimates that 2 per cent
of those countries' GNP is lost to the affect of road traffic accidents.
Costs include medical care, property damage and loss of earnings for the
individual and the country. Worldwide, more than half of road traffic
casualties are young people. They are the wage earners and the child
carers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, it is the same group
that we lose to HIV/AIDS in those countries. There have been around 35
million deaths from HIV/AIDS in those countries in the past two decades,
creating 6 million orphans from AIDS—the only statistic I ever remember on
developing countries. Add to that the number of children who lose a parent
or their livelihood as a result of road traffic accidents.
Accidents are caused by
poor roads, badly trained drivers or drivers not trained at all. We could
all bore for England on the stories we have heard about drivers in
developing countries and the adventures we have had. The most marked
feature for me, certainly of sub-Saharan Africa, was the lack of roads and
the dangerous condition of the ones that existed. This affects the
millennium development goals, which we are so concerned about. Good
infrastructure is missing from the United Nations and G8 programmes on
sustainable development, so it has not yet achieved great prominence.
On the millennium
development goals, the first is to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger".
No roads means you do not get your crops to market, which leads to
increased poverty and hunger. It is as simple as that. The second is to
"achieve universal primary education". Children cannot get to school if
they have to struggle their way through the bush. There is an interesting
example from a community in Morocco that recently decided to put in good
roads so that the children could get to school. In a short time, they got
a rise from 21 per cent to 48 per cent of girls going to school once the
means was there. Among the boys, the rise was from 58 per cent to 76 per
cent—a big increase in the number of children going to school just because
they could get there.
Goals four, five and
six—maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDS—are hugely affected by this.
If you cannot get to a clinic or cannot take your sick child to a
hospital, it is going to affect all those goals, and not just in the
traditional developing countries. I know that in Palestine the
infrastructure is now so bad and the roads so winding and badly damaged
that people are losing their lives because they cannot get to the
hospitals and clinics they need to attend for treatment.
The last millennium
development goal, the "partnership for development" has to include
infrastructure, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, pointed out. Of course
there is no way we can have development without infrastructure in those
countries. The G8 has launched the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa,
in conjunction with NePAD. The World Bank has launched the Global Road
Safety Facility to increase the number of road safety initiatives. There
have been donations from the World Bank and the Dutch Government into that
fund, but with emphasis on the global fund and the international finance
facility—also big initiatives on development—I wonder how successful it
can be. There have been UN resolutions on improving road safety, calling
on the World Health Organisation to co-ordinate on road safety issues.
The UK Government have been
criticised for doing little about this. In conclusion, it is hugely
difficult to get a grip on the major factors in development. The
Department for International Development has done its best, but we must
move as fast as possible to that 0.7 per cent of GNP.
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