The global toll taken by injuries on daily life has fallen by almost a third since 1990, according to a new study that suggests the world is becoming a safer place to live in.
The first Global Burden of Diseases and Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) study was commissioned by The World Bank in the early 1990s.
The findings prompt the researchers to conclude that "the world is becoming a safer place to live in."
As part of a global collaboration, the researchers mined the latest GBD update in 2013 to assess the impact of 26 causes of injury and 47 types of injury, dating back to 1990, for 188 countries in 21 regions of the world.
They used data on the number of injuries, deaths from injuries, and a measure known as disability adjusted life years (DALY).
The DALY is calculated by adding together years of life lost to death, and years of life lived with a disability.
The researchers calculated that in 2013, 973 million sustained injuries that required medical treatment, accounting for 10 per cent of the global toll of disease.
Major causes included car crashes, which made up 29 per cent of the total, followed by self harm, which includes suicide (17.6 per cent); falls (11.6 per cent); and violence (8.5 per cent).
Among those whose injuries warranted some form of healthcare, just under 6 per cent required admission to hospital. The largest category of injury requiring admission was fracture (38.5 per cent).
In almost all regions of the world, injury rates were higher in men than in women, until the age of 80. Almost 5 million people died of their injuries.
Though injuries remain an important cause of ill health and death, between 1990 and 2013, the global DALY, standardised for age, fell by almost a third.
DALYs among the under 15s were lowest in Western Europe and highest in central Sub-Saharan Africa.
Among 15 to 49 year olds, the peak age category for road traffic injuries. The rate in western Sub-Saharan Africa was eight times more than that in Asia Pacific.
Rates were 70 per cent higher in North America than in Western Europe, Australasia and Asia Pacific.
"These decreases in DALY rates for almost all cause of injury categories warrant a general statement that the world is becoming a safer place to live in, although the injury burden remains high in some parts of the world," researchers said.
The research was published in the journal Injury Prevention.
