Abstract:

Introduction: Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are the eighth leading cause of death globally and the leading cause of death for young people. This study aimed to present prevalence and pattern which contribute to road traffic injuries among patient admitted at BMC, in which aspects like age, sex, mechanism of injury, type and site of injury and management/ treatment modalities was determined.

Methods: Design was descriptive cross-sectional, Hospital-based study. The estimated sample of population was 162 participants, admitted at BMC, Mwanza Tanzania from April 2023 to June 2023. The questionnaire was used to collect data, probability convenience sampling procedure was used for data collection and data analysis was done through IBM SPSS statistics 20 computer program.

Results: A total of 162 patients were enrolled in a study had attended in hospitals during the study period. Prevalence of RTIs among patients admitted due to RTAs at BMC was 18.92%. Of all patients involved in the study most affected age group was between 21 – 30 years about 58.6 % and majority are male (71.0%). On pattern of RTAs, this may be attributed to Geographical location such as urban area, and mode of transportation since most cases are due to motorcycle and most victims are passengers and drivers, whereby most accidents are caused by motorcycle collusion (69.1%) cases which are due to high speed and occurred more in asphalted road as compared to non-asphalted road, and patient end up getting fracture (48.1%) followed by laceration (16.7%) and most affecting site are lower limb, upper limb followed by head injury. Also many patient ended up in surgical care (81.5%) and ICU

Conclusion: The prevalence of RTIs among patients admitted at BMC due to RTAs was 18.92%. Several factors such as personal, behavioral, environmental and vehicles related factors had contributed to RTIs as pattern of RTAs in patient admitted at BMC.