Qualifying information on deaths and serious injuries caused by road traffic in five Brazilian capitals using record linkage

The results showed the importance of linking records of the health and police databases for estimating the quality of data on road traffic injuries and the victims in the five capital cities studied. The true causes of death and degrees of severity of the injuries caused by RTC are underestimated in the absence of integration of health and police databases. Thus, it is necessary to define national rules and standards of integration between health and traffic databases in national and state levels in Brazil.