NEW DELHI: Road injuries caused 65 per cent more ill-health, disabilities and early deaths in 2016 than they did in 1990, according to a government report.
The contribution of road injuries to the total disease burden in the country has increased in most states since 1990, said the report compiled by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Public Heath Foundation of India (PHFI) and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
The highest proportion of disease burden due to injuries is in young adults, it said and was ranked as the 10th leading individual cause of health loss in 2016.
Road injuries and self-harm, which includes suicides and non-fatal outcomes of self-harm, are the leading contributors to the injury burden in India, the study said.
The range of disease burden or the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rate varied three fold for road injuries and six fold for self-harm among the states of India in 2016.
There was no consistent relationship between the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) rates of road injuries or self-harm versus the stage of epidemiological transition of the states.
The burden due to road injuries was much higher in males than in females. The DALY rate for self-harm for India as a whole was 1.8 times higher than the average globally for other geographies at a similar level of development in 2016.
The DALY is a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death.
"Road injuries caused 65 per cent more DALYs in 2016 than they did in 1990," the report said.
"The DALY rate for road injuries was highest in Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Punjab, followed by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh," it said.
Meghalaya has the lowest DALYs rate due to road injuries.
The study, which was published in the Lancet Journal, is the first comprehensive analysis of the health of India's 1.34 billion citizens.
It estimates key drivers of ill health, disability and premature death in all 29 states, many of which have populations the size of large countries.