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The third phase of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), an international programme aimed at preventing road crashes and related negative consequences, has been launched in Kumasi.

The six-year Initiative, being implemented locally by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), aims to keep the road as safe as possible for the benefit of society.

Since 2007, the Initiative has helped to save nearly 312,000 lives and prevented up to 11.5 million injuries amongst the participating cities globally through data management, infrastructural development, monitoring, enforcement and communication on the road.

Mr. Osei Assibey-Antwi, the Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said the Initiative targets cities in low and middle-income countries.

The third-phase, he said, had the objective of saving another 600,000 lives and preventing up to 22 million injuries in the beneficiary cities.

He said the KMA would receive technical and financial support from the major partners of the programme, including the World Health Organization (WHO), Vital Strategies, Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), World Resource Institute (WRI) and Johns Hopkins University.

The support is to help build the capacity of the Assembly to implement strategies proven to be effective in preventing road traffic deaths and injuries in line with the best international practices.

Mr. Assibey-Antwi said the Assembly was delighted to have been associated with the programme given how road crashes had maimed and killed innocent people over the years.

“Based on the success of 12-years of investment in road safety, we hope the third phase of this all-important programme would go a long way to keep the roads in Ghana’s second-largest city very safe,” he noted.

Other participating cities are Accra, Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bogota (Colombia), Guadalajara (Mexico), Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Kampala (Uganda), Mumbai, Bengaluru, New Delhi (India), as well as São Paulo, Salvador and Recife (Brazil).

As part of the programme, a virtual meeting was held between authorities of the KMA and representatives from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Health Team, as well as other partner organizations.

According to the Bloomberg Philanthropies, “every year, more than 1.35 million people are killed on the road globally, while road traffic injuries are the eight leading cause of deaths worldwide, and the number one in deaths among people between the ages of five and 29”.

“By implementing proven evidence-based and data-driven interventions, these deaths are nearly entirely preventable,” it added.