Leading traffic medicine and road safety experts will gather in Doha starting tomorrow for the three-day International Traffic and Medicine Association (ITMA) Congress at Sheraton Hotel Doha, the Ministry of
Interior (MoI) has said.
Under the patronage of HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani, the 24th ITMA Congress will focus on the progress on road safety and traffic injury prevention and treatment in recent years.
Experts will discuss the most advanced traffic medicine concepts, theories and techniques to promote traffic crash prevention, safety, first-aid, medical treatment, and reduce mortality and disability resulting from
traffic injury.
National Traffic Safety Committee secretary-general Brigadier Mohamed Abdulla al-Malki said that organising such a conference would help many rapidly developing countries to overcome common challenges by identifying the best practices that are applied in
developed countries.
“The exchange of experiences and working together to achieve traffic safety on the roads is very important,” he said.
Besides road safety and traffic crash prevention, the congress will also tackle traffic medicine which covers a wide range of disciplines, techniques, and methods aimed at reducing the harm traffic crashes inflicted on humans.
Some of the persons involved in traffic medicine include trauma surgeons treating crash victims; those who transport victims from the crash site to medical treatment; people dispatching help to the crash site; automotive engineers working to improve vehicle crashworthiness, develop better safety belts, brakes, or lights; roadway engineers designing safer roads, and traffic engineers developing safer traffic control systems, among others.
Dr Wafa al-Yazeedi, chairperson of the Scientific Committee, said the programme they developed for attendees covers the latest research and findings in traffic medicine and road safety.
“Our workshops and panel discussion sessions encompass a range of relevant topics in our field and we have some of the world’s foremost experts joining us,” she added.
The congress will also welcome more than 100 experts and resource speakers who will be
presenting their work.
Delegates to the event will include doctors, physiologists, psychologists, traffic safety experts, vehicle designers and manufacturers, engineers, policy makers, police officers, and insurance experts.
“Safe personal mobility for pedestrians, bicyclists, car drivers, and passengers in all sorts of vehicles is increasingly important and valuable for a world that is shrinking due to expanding communication between and within countries,” ITMA president Lars
Englund said.