Over 50,000 disabled by road accidents
More than 50,000 road-accident victims become mentally or physically disabled every year, according to an estimate by the Public Health Ministry's permanent secretary Dr Prat Boonyawongvirot.
Prat said yesterday the estimate was based on the fact that road accidents injured 976,357 people last year, about 107 people an hour. "We hope to reduce casualties and are determined to improve emergency services," Prat said during a workshop in Lampang attended by about 400 health professionals and rescuers from the North. Prat said the ministry planned to reduce road accidents by 15 per cent by 2010. "We plan to develop medical-emergency units in every village, and we will produce more specialists in emergency medicine. We hope that each province will have at least two specialists in this field," he said. Currently Thailand has only 27 emergency-medicine specialists.
|
