Trauma care systems need to be strengthened: Minister

Union Minister P Radhakrishnan today made a strong pitch for strengthening trauma care system at hospitals to ensure early rehabilitation of road accident victims even as he stressed on attitudinal change and adherence to laws to minimise such incidents.
Radhakrishan, who is Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, said that alongside awareness drive, there is an urgent need to promote actions for ensuring rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the victims with a view to saving the life and reducing the severity of the impact.
"India has opportunity for economic development due to the youngest population on account of demographic dividend. But it is sad to note that precious human resources are lost due to road accidents.

"We should there alongside awareness drive, promote actions which are quite necessary to ensure rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the victims with a view to saving the life and reducing the severity of the impact.
"For this we should strengthen hospital trauma care systems and provide early rehabilitation to the injured for minimizing both physical and psychological trauma," the Minister said at an event, 'Workshop on Multisectoral Response to Road Traffic Injuries in India' organised by WHO.
He said that government was committed to reduce accidents and called for a multi-pronged strategy to manage the road accident and post accident actions.

"Nearly 48 per cent of the accidents occur due to exceeding lawful speed. There is one death every four minutes due to a road accident in India. It is quite heart rending to know that 377 people lose their lives every day equivalent to jet crashing," he added.
Referring to the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill 2016 as a historical step towards making roads safe, Radhakrishan said, "We have been making sincere efforts to reduce accidents. However, attitudinal change is of paramount importance in tackling this issue because of the fact that individual responsibility, self-discipline and respecting rules of the land alone can minimise the incidence of accidents."

He said that the rapid economic development in India has enabled a large number of people to have access to monitor vehicles and of late there has also been a steep increase in the number of vehicles on the road.