IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH DATA ECOSYSTEMS

The current thematic health report is on road transport accident deaths that occurred between the years 2007 up to 2019, with the following key findings:

Results on trend analysis for 2007–2019 road transport accident deaths are as follows:

There was a steady increase in the percentage contribution of external causes of morbidity and mortality to the overall deaths from 9,0% in 2007 to 12,4% in 2019. Contribution of all transport accident deaths to the non-natural causes show a fluctuating pattern of road transport accident deaths, with lowest percentage observed in 2008 (10,9%) while the highest percentage was recorded in 2016 (12,4), decreasing to 11,4% in 2017 and again declining to 11,3% in 2019. Road transport accident deaths showed an increase in the number of deaths from 6 190 in 2007 to 6 423 in 2019.

The most common age groups to die from road transport accidents were 25–29, 30–34, and 35–39 years. December had the highest number of deaths except for 2008, 2013 and 2017 respectively. January and February were the months with fewest recorded deaths (6,8% and 6,3%), respectively.

People who died as car occupants increased from 363 in 2007 to 548 in 2019, while those who died as pedestrians increased from 640 deaths in 2007 to 771 deaths in 2019. Results show that hospitals were the common place of death for road transport accident deaths for all the years under review, for most provinces except for Western Cape, Northern Cape, and Free State.  Road transport accident deaths that occurred in province of usual residence were higher than those that occurred outside the province of residence.

Results on 2019 road transport accident deaths are as follows:

Females between the ages 20–44 years accounted for 49,8% of female deaths while males accounted for almost two-thirds of male deaths (62,1%) due to road transport accidents.

People who died as pedestrians contributed 12,0% of road transport accident deaths, followed by those who died as car occupants at 8,5%.  The percentage of female pedestrians who died of road transport accidents was higher than the percentage of males (12,4% females and 11,8% males). KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, and Eastern Cape recorded higher percentages at 24,4%, 19,8% and 14,7% respectively.

Generally, females contributed a higher percentage of people who died as pedestrians and car occupants above their male counterparts, while males had percentages above females for people who died as motorcyclists and pedal cyclists.