Reflection of Epidemiological Impact on Burden of Injury in Tertiary Care Centre, Pre-COVID and COVID Era: “Lockdown, a Good Fortune for Saving Life and Limb”

Abstract

Road traffic injuries continue to be a major public health concern and are a leading cause of death and injury across the world. Road transport remains the most favoured mode of transport for both freight and passenger movement in India. As per the World Health Organization, approximately 1.35 million people die annually on the world’s roads, and another 20 to 50 million sustain nonfatal injuries as a result of road traffic crashes. These injuries and deaths have an immeasurable impact on the families affected, whose lives are often changed irrevocably by these tragedies, and on the communities in which these people lived and worked. India ranks 1 in the total number of traffic-related deaths across the 199 countries reported in the World Road Statistics, 2018, followed by China and the USA due to its large population (India, 21.7, and China, 18.6, fatalities per 100,000), although several Central American and African countries have higher fatality rates. During COVID-19 (coronavirus disease-19) pandemic, a national lockdown was implemented by Government of India from 24 March to 31 May 2020, in four phases to control the spread of SARS CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2) infection. In our observational study, we compared the epidemiology of trauma patients of two periods from 1 April to 31 May 2019 and 24 March to 31 May 2020 and found out that unique concept of lockdown with stringent implementation of discipline, alcohol ban, behavioural change in visiting family and friends as minimum as possible, promoting work from home and digital classes for school and colleges lead to phenomenal decrease in traffic-related injuries and fatality. The lockdown has grossly decreased ‘disability-adjusted life year’(DALY), an outcome indicator for cost-effective analysis, which is calculated as the value of future years of healthy life lost to morbidity/disability and future years of life lost to premature mortality.