The Ministry of Interior celebrated the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims under the theme “towards the United Nations (UN) 2020 target to reduce mortality and serious injury by 50 percent”.

A number of relevant and interested parties in the traffic sector participated in the celebration organized Sunday by the General Directorate of Traffic.

Director General of Traffic and Deputy Chairman of the National Committee for Traffic Safety Brigadier General Mohammed Saad Al Kharji said that this celebration is an occasion to remind that traffic accidents are one of the disasters that threaten countries and cause economic losses ranging from two to eight percent of GDP.

He pointed out in his speech during the ceremony that traffic accidents take the lives of thousands of young people in the age group able to work, which deprives countries of the productive potential cannot be compensated.

Director General of Traffic stressed the importance of further efforts to reduce these incidents and to appreciate the efforts of the police, ambulance, civil defense and others who lost their lives to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.

Brigadier Al Kharji also pointed to the UN plan to strengthen the work in this framework, which was ratified by all countries, called the “plan of the decade” 2011-2020, which called on countries to reduce the number of deaths by 50 percent by 2020.

He noted that the plan of the decade was followed by the goals of sustainable development, which for the first time included traffic safety, congestion and improved urban planning, road and transport networks for the period 2015-2030.

Director of the Public Health Department at the Ministry of Public Health Sheikh Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani said that road accidents annually case the death of around 1,250,000 people worldwide, in addition to various injuries to about 50 million others.

He added in his speech that injuries resulting from traffic accidents are the first cause of death of people between the ages of 15 and 29 years.

The State of Qatar had committed itself to the implementation of the 2030 sustainable development plan and the road safety “plan of the decade” 2011-2020, from its belief that road traffic injuries could be avoided or reduced, Director of the Public Health Department at the Ministry of Public Health said.

He stressed that all sectors in Qatar have shown commitment to the necessary procedures to provide comprehensive road safety, with the participation of police, transportation, health and education such as the national strategy for traffic safety, which the health sector is one of its most important partners.

Sheikh Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani pointed out that the national strategy for health and the public health budget for 2017-2022 was concerned with setting targets in the field of traffic safety and considered it a priority health area in addition to the preventive and awareness aspect.

He said that the Ministry of Public Health is interested in responding after the road accidents to save the injured from drivers, escorts, and pedestrians, and reduce serious injuries.

Sheikh Dr. Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani pointed out that among the initiatives adopted by the ministry, the improvement of communication services for the ambulance service, providing more than 1450 ambulance personnel with tens of thousands of daily communications, resulting in the phone response time of the accident is about five seconds, and the time to reach the scene is seven minutes inside Doha, and eight minutes outside the capital.

The ceremony witnessed a review of Qatar’s efforts to reduce and mitigate traffic accidents at various levels.

Source: Fana News