One death, many tragedies

At the recent launch of our new Make Roads Safe report in Rome, we worked with Fleet Forum to bring a range of development NGOs round the table including Oxfam, World Vision, and Interaction, plus some of the big UN agencies operating fleets. The aim was to discuss their exposure to road injuries, both for employees driving and travelling on often dangerous roads and for the vulnerable people they are working in the poorest countries to help, and how fleet safety can be improved. And we also discussed road safety as a development issue - how poor road safety impacts on provision of health services, how it disrupts education, and imposes often unbearable financial burdens on families struggling above and below the poverty line.

So it is interesting to read this http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=275 by Oxfam's Head of Research, Duncan Green. This kind of terrible story, and the appalling waste of potential and humanity it represents is happening all too often. It's not just a tragedy for Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's friends, family and colleagues, but also a setback for the hundreds of thousands of mothers-to-be for whom he was working to improve ante-natal care, a micro example of how neglect of road safety can seriously damage other agendas and delivery of the MDGs.