Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health

http://aph.sagepub.com/ Estimation of Fatalities Due to Road Traffic Crashes in Karachi, Pakistan, Using Capture-Recapture Method
Muhammad Usman Lateef Asia Pac J Public Health 2010 22: 332 DOI: 10.1177/1010539509356808 The online version of this article can be found at: http://aph.sagepub.com/content/22/3/332

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Estimation of Fatalities Due to Road Traffic Crashes in Karachi, Pakistan, Using CaptureRecapture Method
Muhammad Usman Lateef1

Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health 22(3) 332341 2010 APJPH Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1010539509356808 http://aph.sagepub.com

Abstract The objective of the study was to estimate the magnitude of road traffic fatalities occurring in Karachi, Pakistan. A 2-source capturerecapture model was applied to obtain a reliable estimate of the magnitude of the problem. A conservative adjusted estimate of fatalities generated, using data from 2 sources matched by at least name, gender, age, and location. In 2008, police reported 616 fatalities whereas hospitals recorded 1092 fatalities due to road traffic crashes. The capture recapture analysis estimated at least 1375 fatalities. Police data show 55% deficit from the estimated figure and 43.6% deficit from the observed one, whereas hospital data show 20.6% deficit from the estimation. Road traffic crashes and resulting fatalities and injuries are a much more substantial health problem than is evident from official statistics. The capturerecapture analysis can be used as a tool to provide affordable and reliable estimates in developing countries where routine official statistics suffer from underreporting. Keywords road traffic crashes, road traffic injuries, estimation, capturerecapture method, fatalities

Introduction
After the first road fatality on August 17, 1896 in London, the coroner said, This must never happen again.1 More than a century later, globally, 1.2 million people die each year on roads. Road traffic crashes are hidden global epidemic on the world roadways. In the recent decades, rapid motorization has enhanced the lives of many individuals and societies, but the benefits have led to higher risk of traffic crashes. Although the number of lives lost in road crashes in high-income countries has decreased in recent decades, the number is still increasing in developing countries. The key finding on global trends and projections are summarized below. More than 1 million people every year are killed in road crashes, and 20 to 50 million are injured or disabled. In 2002 alone 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million injured in road crashes.2
1

Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, Pakistan

Corresponding Author: Muhammad Usman Lateef, Department of Neuro-Surgery, W 16, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Rafiqee Shaheed Road, Karachi 75510, Pakistan Email: mulateef@gmail.com

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Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are the 11th leading cause of death worldwide and accounted for 2.1% of all deaths globally. Furthermore, these road traffic deaths accounted for 23% of all injury deaths worldwide.3 RTIs globally ranked 9th among the leading cause of diseases, and the ranking is projected to rise to 3rd by 2020.4 Over the past 4 decades there has been an overall downward trend in road traffic deaths in high-income countries, but still a disproportionate number of RTIs caused deaths and disabilities in developing countries. In 1998, developing countries accounted for more than 85% of all deaths due to road traffic crashes globally, where 81% of the world population live and own about 20% of the worlds vehicles.5 In 2002, about 90% of road traffic deaths occurred in low-income and middle-income countries.6 About 90% of the disability adjusted life worldwide due to road traffic injuries occurred in developing countries.4 Road traffic deaths are predicted to increase by 83% in low-income and middle-income countries, and to decrease by 27% in high-income countries. The overall global increase is predicted to be 67% by 2020 if appropriate action is not taken.7 RTIs are predicted to rise from 10th place in 2002 to 8th place by 2030 as a contributor to the global burden of disease.8 Pakistan is a developing country with an estimated population of 136 million, making it the 7th most populous country of the world. The World Bank places it geographically in the Middle Eastern Crescent and economically among low-income countries.9 Injuries in Pakistan are the 2nd leading cause of disability, the 11th cause of premature mortality, and the 5th cause of overall healthy lifeyear losses.10,11 The RTI incidence of Pakistan per its first survey in 1997 is 15.1 per 1000 injuries.12 These figures still underestimate the true incidence of RTI, because the information is from indirect sources such as police records rather than a centralized trauma surveillance system. It has also been pointed out that despite the fact that the health chapter of the 9th Five Year Plan13 appreciated the grave threat of unchecked RTI; there have been no attempts toward the establishment of a trauma registry or a surveillance system, typically the first step toward RTI research.

Road Traffic Injury Research & Prevention Centre

Karachi is the largest and most populous city of the Pakistan, which is spread over 3529 km2 in area, and having a population14 of 12 991 000 and 1 508 215 registered vehicles.15 In terms of metropolitan population it is the 20th largest city of the world.14 Despite these statistics, there remains a dearth of RTI-related data from Karachi, or from any other part of Pakistan for that matter. It is also noteworthy that a city of such paramount national importance is being managed without an approved transport policy. Liberalization of credit facilities for purchase of vehicles in Pakistan in 2002 has led to an exponential increase in the number of registered vehicles of the city. A study of data from Pakistan by Ghaffar et al,16 covering the period 1948 to 1996 has shown a clear relationship between increasing levels of motorization in Pakistan and the number of fatal crashes. They suggest that the problem of road traffic crashes will only get worse. The alarming increasing in the number of road traffic crashes in Karachi resulted in the establishment of the Road Traffic Injury Research & Prevention Centre. The Centre is a joint effort

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from health care workers, engineers, and policy makers and has been set up on the lines of similar surveillance programs established in high-income countries. The Centre initiated its operation in January 2007 as a joint project of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Agha Khan University Hospital, and NED University of Engineering & Technology and approved by the Federal Ministry of Health, Government of Pakistan. The Centre collects RTI data from 5 major trauma centers spread over different parts of the city. These trauma centers include Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Civil Hospital Karachi, Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Liaquat National Hospital, and Agha Khan University Hospital. These hospitals cater to almost all the major trauma victims of the city and a large proportion of victims with less severe injuries. First of all, a questionnaire was developed with detailed information regarding the victims demographics, time of the day, location details, type of vehicle involved in crash, means of transportation to hospital, and injury severity. For data acquisition, the major sources of information include the victims, eye witnesses, ambulance services, hospitals, and police records. The data collectors are made available round the clock for reporting of the RTIs victims within the emergency departments of the trauma centers. All hospitalized victims are further followed through their hospital course and information within 30 days of mortality is recorded. The information thus acquired is then brought to the Road Traffic Injury Research & Prevention Centre, where it is rechecked and data are entered into Microsoft Excel. In Karachi city it is difficult to find out the total number of hospitals, let alone RTIs seen by each of them. Rates based on few of these hospitals would be expected to underestimate the real figure of the community. The dearth of similar evaluations for RTIs in low-income and middleincome countries represents a serious research policy gap and hinders the implementation of effective strategies in these countries.17

Literature Review
Incidence and prevalence estimates provide the foundation for the design and evaluation of essential health programs. Accurate estimates of the public health burden of fatalities can assist priority setting and healthy public policy decisions. Accurate epidemiological data regarding RTIs have been lacking in many developing countries.18 Road crashes data from developing countries are primarily based on either hospital logs19,20 or are derived from police records.21,22 It is believed that both sources underestimate the total burden of injuries and fatalities.23 The capturerecapture (CR) method has been used extensively in biological science and medicine for difficult-to-count population.24-26 This method is most valuable when a researcher fails to detect all individuals present within a population of interest. It is based on matching of 2 independent samples to arrive at an estimation of the total. The technique was first used in 1662 to estimate the population of London, but it was not until 150 years later that Laplace laid out its mathematical foundations.27 In 1896, Peterson used the approach to estimate the harvestable stock of Danish fish populations, and in 1930, Lincoln used it to estimate waterfall abundance in US flyways.27 In wildlife applications, the method is often called the LincolnPeterson estimator; in demography, it is known as dual system estimation. Its continued refinement over the past 75 years has been stimulated by the needs of research and management. The earliest modern application of this method in demography appears to have been to estimate vital rates in India in 1949.28 Its earliest use in epidemiology was to estimate the number of hospital patients using methicillin in 1966.29 CR method have been used to estimate population size in a wide variety of health applications, for example, infants born with birth defects, women with preclinical cancer, persons with severe and persistent mental illness, drug abusers, and persons with sexually transmitted infections. Such methods have also been used to evaluate the degree of ascertainment of various diseases monitoring system.30 Ball et al,31

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in 1999, used the CR method to estimate the number of people killed in Kosovo. The literature on the analysis of CR studies has blossomed since the early 1990s. This statistical method has seldom been used to evaluate the number of deaths and injuries. This study seems to be the second to use the CR method for estimating fatalities due to road traffic crashes in Karachi. It was used for the first time by the Razzak and Luby32 in 1998, which was based on the comparison of hospital data and Edhi Ambulance Service data, a private philanthropic organization that transports road crashes victims to hospitals. Using an ambulance service data in the analysis is not suitable in the sense that there are a large number of such organizations providing ambulance service to the victims of road crashes, as compare with the police data, which is a single independent source of information regarding road traffic fatalities. Assessing the magnitude and pattern of road fatalities in Karachi at this juncture is important for many reasons. The rapid motorization in the recent years due to availability of credit has significantly increased the traffic volume of the city. Since then, the roads of Karachi are continuously developing at a rapid pace. This development comes with a high human loss, because the construction of multilevel flyovers, signal-free corridors, and resulting high-speed traffic ultimately increase the severity of injuries and resulting fatalities.

Methods
The CR methoda type of synthetic estimationis a statistical method for indirectly estimating prevalence. The CR method works by calculating the overlap patterns between the data sources and producing models that explain the patterns in terms of whether the different data sources are related. Prevalence estimates are usually derived from the model that provides the best fit, according to specific statistical measures and the narrowest confidence intervals around the estimates calculated. Based on the 2 data sets, we applied a 2-source CR model to estimate the number of fatalities due to road traffic crashes in the city. The first capture was the number of fatalities recorded by the Road Traffic Injury Research & Prevention Centre. The recapture was the number of fatalities recorded by the police. An estimate of the total number of fatalities was made with the following formula33,34: N = (M + 1) (C + 1)/(R + 1) - 1, where N is the number of estimated fatalities, M the number of fatalities captured by hospital data, C the No of fatalities captured by police data, and R the number of fatalities identified in both data sources (matches). Typically, after a crash the victims are transported to the nearest hospital. Hospitalized patients were interviewed by trained personnel using a standard data collection form, which carried detailed information regarding the victims name, age, gender, address, time of the accident, location of the accident, type of vehicles involved in the crash, means of transportation to the hospital, injury severity, treatment, and prognosis. Police records are the second major source of information regarding road fatalities in the city. Although it is a legal requirement for police to report all motor vehicle collisions resulting in deaths and injuries, it has been observed that only a few cases, when there is loss of life or sizeable property damage occurred are reported formally. The police data also contain name, age, gender, address, vehicles involved, probable causes, and estimation of property damage. An annual report is then published with more detailed analysis to guide remedial actions. Data were compiled and matched case by case for all incidences for the year 2008. Each fatal case of the hospital data was matched with the police data regarding 6 important variables, including name, gender, age, location, date, and time of incidence. The degree of

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Table 1. The 3 Different Standards Used to Define Match Between Police and Hospital Data Standard A B C Name Same Same Same Gender Same Same Same Age Same Same Same Location Similar Similar Similar Date Same Same Time Same

matching was then defined based on 3 different standards (A, B, and C; Table 1). Standard A, the strictest standard, required that all the variables of the victim match. For standards B and C, the criteria were progressively slackened so that each subsequent standard required one less criterion for a match. Next the estimation of the number of fatalities and the percentage of underreporting from both sources was done. The efficiency of the estimators was considered against the standard error and confidence interval (CI) for the estimates (95% CI). The following formulae35 were used to calculate the standard error and CI of the estimates (95% CI): SE = (N-M)(N-C)/R, 95% CI = n1.96SE. The lowest values of the standard error were considered to be the best estimators for these criteria. The range of CI was also considered to be the best estimator. In epidemiology, CR analysis often uses existing administrative records, not designed for CR analysis, instead of random surveys of the population according to a common protocol.36 The accuracy of the sources used, such as correct diagnosis and coding and sufficient information for appropriate record linkage is important. The data sources should be able to provide overlap information among the sources, as this is the key concept of CR analysis, and therefore complementary or mutually exclusive data sources should not be used.

Results
In 2008, Road Traffic Injury Research Project captured 1092 fatalities from 5 trauma centers of the city,37 whereas police record shows 616 fatalities. The point estimate for fatalities using the least restrictive standard for matching, standard C (when name, gender, age, and location matched) comparison of 2 data sources identified 489 matches, yielding an estimate of at least 1375 fatalities per year, using the most restrictive standard, standard A, resulted in a larger estimate of 1913 fatalities per year (Table 2). The analysis revealed that police data could hardly represent the total picture regarding road fatalities. Even with the least restrictive matching criteria, the police data show 55.2% deficit from the estimated and 43.6% from observed one. Table 3 provides the desegregated information of fatalities from road traffic crashes by gender, age groups, and road user type with the time series dimension of 1 year. Though the analysis here is basic and crude, it highlights some important trends. Most of the reported victims were males from the hospital and police data (90.8% and 86.3%, respectively). Riders and pillion riders accounted for 38.8% and 43.01% of total victims according to hospital and police data, respectively. Most people were young people, aged 16 to 30 years accounting for 37% and 33% of the total according to hospital and police records, respectively.

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Table 2. Estimation of Fatalities Due to Road Traffic Accidents in Karachi, for 2008, Using the CaptureRecapture Method Match Standard A B C No. of Matches 348 410 489 No. of Unmatched in Hospital Data 744 682 603 No. of Unmatched in Police Data 268 206 127 Estimated Fatalities 1913 1558 1375

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Standard 95% Confidence Error Interval 56.3 32.72 20.95 1820-2041 1493-1622 1333-1416

Table 3. Distribution of Road Traffic Fatalities by Gender, Road User Type, and Age Group Comparing Hospital and Police Record in Karachi During the Year 2008 Hospital Data Variables Gender Male Female Road user type Rider/pillion Pedestrian Passenger Driver Age group (years) 15 16-30 31-45 45-60 60 Total Number 992 100 424 422 144 102 181 414 264 162 71 1092 Percentage 90.84 9.15 38.82 38.64 13.18 9.34 16.57 37.91 24.17 14.83 6.50 100 Number 532 84 265 256 71 24 75 205 170 124 42 616 Police Data Percentage 86.36 13.63 43.01 41.55 11.52 3.89 12.17 33.27 27.59 2012 6.81 100

Discussion
Observing and monitoring public health requires a surveillance system that captures useful data, from which a descriptive epidemiological profile can be formed. With this information priorities can be identified and groups targeted for specific interventions based on their profile. It also allows evaluation of interventions and the best use of resources in the management of the condition. A concern with any surveillance system is the quality of the data collected, including the degree of ascertainment of affected individuals. To determine the usefulness of any surveillance system, there must be some way of assessing the quality of data and completeness of ascertainment. One that attempts to accomplish this is the CR method. The use of CR method in epidemiology has expanded over the past 10 years and no doubt will continue to be adopted. Although it has a role in public health surveillance, a more traditional approach to disease monitoring seems more advantageous in certain instances. It has been proposed as a cost-effective technique for resourcepoor countries where routine reporting systems suffer from underreporting. The CR approach holds continuing promise for its application in epidemiologic surveillance. However, even though CR is a valuable method for enhancing existing surveillance data, there is an ongoing need to strengthen more traditional surveillance systems and data collection

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sources. This involves activities as improving and validating case definitions, promoting diagnosis and reporting, developing information systems, and training in the use of health records. In applying such dual system estimators there are 4 major assumptions that must be met to produce reliable results:38,39 Closure: The population under study is closed, that is, no changes in births, deaths, immigration, or emigration during the sampling process (demographic closure). Homogeneity: All individuals in the defined population under study have equal probabilities of being observed (captured) in any sample. Perfect matching: Individuals identified in one source can be perfectly matched to another source without error, that is, no mismatches or nonmatches. Independence: The sources are independent of one another, that is, the probability of appearing on one list is not affected by the probability of being on another. The violation of first assumption can reduce the probability of recapture and will lead to an overestimation of N. In this study, because the capture and recapture are taking place at the same time and within a limited space, there was less chance of any change in the population. The second assumption is that the population of interest should be homogeneous in the sense that each member of population has an equal chance of being captured in any data source. As there is a legal requirement of police to record all fatalities occurring in their jurisdiction and medicolegal officer of the hospital to report the entire road crashes victims taken to the hospital. So all fatalities had an equal chance of either being reported by the police or transported to the hospital. The third assumption is that there are no errors when matching the records across the lists. An accurate estimate of matches is particularly crucial for this process because it is one of the most important steps in CR analysis. Inaccurate record linkage can substantially alter the size of the observed and unobserved fractions.40 The last assumption is that samples are independent. In other words, presence in one source does not influence presence in other source. The use of only 2 data source prevents mathematical assessment of possible interdependence, potentially causing underestimation or overestimation.41 In general, most estimation methods appear to be very sensitive to the breakdown of certain assumptions: They are not robust. The assumption of homogeneity is also questionable in the CR method. The traditional assumption that all members of a given population are equally catchable on all occasions is now recognized to rarely hold. For example, it is more likely that persons with a lower income will use public sector health services than persons who can afford private sector health services. Much work has been done in recent years to allow the assumption to be relaxed, leading to the construction of models that allow for variation in the capture probabilities. The 3 major sources of variation are the following42: capture probabilities that vary by time, capture probabilities that vary by behavioral responses, and capture probabilities that vary by the individual (heterogeneity among individuals) As neither the true value of the parameter to be estimated nor the correct assumptions about capture probabilities are known, whatever estimate is computed from the selected model should be accompanied by confidence limits to give an idea of its reliability. In practice, this has resulted in wide confidence intervals that raise doubts regarding the reliability of the estimate and the realistic nature of the model. In designing studies, the investigator must be aware of the basic underlying assumptions and make the correct transition from model assumptions to the real world of human populations.

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Conclusion
In many developing countries, road crashes are still seen as accidents that cannot be prevented. Recognition of road crashes as a major public health problem that is predictable and preventable is essential in addressing this emerging global epidemic. Many high-income countries, such as Australia, have had dramatic success in reducing the incidence of road traffic injuries in recent decades despite increase in motorization. This expertise can play an important role in helping developing countries to modify and implement intervention strategies that are known to be effective. Estimation of fatalities due to road traffic crashes is important in addressing this emerging global epidemic as a major public health problem in Karachi. CR analysis is an affordable alternative to provide an estimate of the burden of road fatalities in developing countries. Similar to other studies, this study revealed deficit of police data. The study shows that the data collected from the emergency departments of the hospitals is more reliable in assessing the magnitude of the problem. Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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