Railway associated injuries in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan is ranked 12th worldwide for passenger kilometres (km) travelled by railway network. The objective of this study was to assess the railway network related morbidity and mortality in Pakistan. Reported deaths and injuries due to this network were extracted from two secondary datasets: (1) an international disaster database and (2) ambulance log registers for the city of Karachi. Over the period from 1997 to 2006, a total of 11 railway disasters resulted in 449 deaths and 840 injuries. An estimated 2.05 passengers died and another 3.84 passengers were injured per billion km travelled in Pakistan, a rate six times higher than Western European countries. The ambulance log showed that one person died every two weeks in Karachi over a period from September 2007 to Jun 2008 (N = 26). The male-to-female ratio of all injury victims (N = 50) was 9:1 with a mean age of 35.6 years. Surveillance of these injuries is essential to implement prevention and control measures in Pakistan.

Keywords:

• disaster
• injury
• Pakistan
• railway

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Edhi foundation in particular Rizwan Edhi for providing necessary records for this study. The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from two anonymous reviewers. There is no funding nor conflict of interest.