Epidemiology of road traffic accident deaths in children in Chandigarh zone of North West India

The fatalities from Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) constitute a major cause of unnatural deaths among children in Chandigarh zone of North West India. The epidemiology of RTA related deaths in this age group is lacking in our country. This retrospective study (1974-2013) included children (⩽18 years) who became victims of RTA and subsequently died during the course of treatment. The postmortem and hospital records of the victims were used to collect the epidemiological data regarding age, sex, area of residence, etc. These deaths constituted 9.4% of total road accident deaths reported at this hospital. Out of a total of 709 RTA deaths in children, about 16% were reported in the block year of 1974-78 and this proportion decreased to 9.4% during the block year of 1984-88 and has remained almost constant since then. The maximum number of victims belonged to the states of Haryana (36%) and Punjab (34%). A higher number of deaths were observed in rural population (60%). Most of the fatalities occurred between 12-4 pm (29.9%) and pedestrians (47.8%) were found to be the most commonly affected. The most common affected was the 16-18 year age group (35.3%). Injury to head and neck region (81.4%) was responsible for a majority of deaths. The study concluded that the RTA remains an important cause of unnatural deaths in children. The static proportion of these deaths over the past three decades signifies that the road safety policies have been ineffective in preventing causalities and need further improvements.