Estimating road traffic injuries in Jinja district, Uganda, using the capture-recapture method

ABSTRACT

Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are commonly under-reported in low-and-medium-income countries. This study aimed to estimate the number of RTIs and determine the magnitude of under-reporting by traffic police and hospital registries. A two-source capture-recapture method was applied to RTI data from police and hospital registries. Seven matching variables; sex of the injured, date, place, time, day of crash and road user type were used to get the matched cases. Police independently reported 46 RTIs and the hospitals reported 206 RTIs. Using the capture-recapture analysis, both sources estimated 313 RTIs (95% CI 273–343). The police registry captured 14.4% of the estimated number of RTIs and the hospitals captured 60.4%. The estimated number of RTIs was higher than reported by either the police or the hospitals alone. Neither the police nor the hospitals provided accurate data on RTIs, calling for the strengthening of both sources of data.

KEYWORDS:

• Road traffic injuries
• capture-recapture method
• Jinja Uganda hospital data
• police data

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the management and personnel at the Jinja Central Police and the Jinja Regional Referral Hospital for their support during the data collection process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health (Chronic Consequences of Trauma, Injuries and Disability across the Lifespan: Uganda) [grant number 5D43TW009284].