Alarming Report on Spinal Cord Injury by WHO

A recent study has found that as many as 500,000 suffer from a spinal cord injury each year. The report by World Health Organization shows that people with spinal cord injuries 2 to 5 times more likely to die prematurely and the worst survival rates are from the low and middle income countries.

The report is entitled, “International perspectives on spinal cord injury”. It summarizes the best evidence on the causes, prevention, and care and lived experiences of those people who are suffering from spinal cord injuries. It was found that males between 20-29 years and 70 years and older are most at risk of spinal cord injury. The male to female ratio was of at least 2:1 among adults.

It was found that up to 90 percent of these spinal cord injuries are due to traumatic causes. These include, road traffic crashes, falls and violence. This data varies across regions around the world. Like for example , road traffic accidents are the main contributor to spinal cord injury in the African Region (nearly 70% of cases) and the Western Pacific Region (55% of cases) and falls the leading cause in the South-East Asia and Eastern Mediterranean Regions (40% of cases).

People with spinal cord injury have been found to have chronic pain and an estimated 20-30 percent of them show significant signs of depression.

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