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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Injury Prevention and Control
Volume 13 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1511715
Epidemiology of road traffic accidents and its associated factors among public transportation in Africa: Systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted- 1 Wolaita Sodo University, Sodo, Ethiopia
- 2 Hawassa University, Awasa, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, Ethiopia
- 3 Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Introduction: Nowadays, Injuries, disabilities, and deaths due to road traffic accidents pose a major threat to public health worldwide. There was no meta-analysis study conducted in this area in Africa, hence the need for the study. Objectives: This review aimed to assess the pooled prevalence and associated factors of road traffic accidents among public transportation in Africa. The objective of this review was to estimate the pooled prevalence and associated factors of road traffic accidents among public transportation in Africa.Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis study was conducted in Africa according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.Using Boolean logic operators and targeted keywords, we searched for publications on several electronic databases (Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar, African Journals Online (AJOL), and Science Direct). The degree of heterogeneity among the included studies, the 95% confidence interval, Results: This review included 45 studies with 15,968 participants. The overall estimated pooled prevalence of road traffic accident among public transportation in Africa was found to be 38.83% (95% CI: 33.54, 44.12). Sensitivity analysis confirmed the robustness of the estimated prevalence. Meta-regression found no significant influence of sample size, publication year, country, study design, and sub-region on RTA prevalence. Based on a sub-group analysis by countries where the studies were conducted, the higher pooled prevalence of road traffic accidents was found in Congo at 67.90% (95% CI: 59.99, 75.81), while the lower pooled prevalence of road traffic accidents was in Libya at 15.80% (95% CI: 10.99, 20.61). Driving experience (AOR: 2.64, 95% CI: 1.70, 3.34), chewing Khat while driving (AOR= 4.69, CI: 2.80, 7.85), alcohol use (AOR=2.72, CI: 1.49, 4.97), and receiving mobile phone calls while driving (AOR=2.37, CI: 1.42, 3.95) were factors significantly associated with road traffic accidents.In conclusion, the pooled prevalence of road traffic accidents in Africa was found to be high. Therefore, we recommend that drivers have to strictly adhere to traffic regulations Moreover, It is suggested that policymakers and administrators ought to gain awareness of road traffic accidents and its risk factors to put existing road traffic accidents preventive and control measures into action.
Keywords: Road traffic accidents, Prevalence, Associated factors, drivers, Systematic review, Meta-analysis, Africa
Received: 15 Oct 2024; Accepted: 23 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Atalay, Alemie, Gelsw and Gelaw. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yibeltal Assefa Atalay, Wolaita Sodo University, Sodo, Ethiopia
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