Road traffic injuries are an emerging public health priority for Iraq that will need to be addressed. Although reliable data on the incidence of road traffic injuries in Iraq are lacking, it is an important public health issue, and information can be derived from indirect indicators. Road traffic injury risk is the product of motor vehicles per person and injuries or fatalities per vehicle. In countries with accelerated economic growth like Iraq, the number of vehicles tends to increase accompanied by an increase in road traffic injuries. It will take improvements in vehicle safety and implementation of traffic legislation to counter this increase. Data from former East Germany show that, after reunification and subsequent economic change, a 41% increase in car numbers was associated with a four-fold increase in road traffic injury associated mortality between 1989 and 1991.
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