The developing world suffers not only from the epidemics we're used to thinking about, like HIV/AIDS and malaria, but from an epidemic of injuries caused by accidents. Some of those accidents happen in the workplace, some in the home, but a huge number happen on the road. Nine out of every ten fatal road accidents happen in the developing world. In Africa, half of the kids who die between the ages of five and fourteen die from injuries, and road traffic is the main cause of those injuries.

Amend.org, a new NGO set up by WorldChanging ally Jeffrey Witte, aims to change that:

While a lot of people don’t think of injury as a public health issue, that is exactly what it is. [F]or every injury, there was a sequence of events and environmental conditions that led to the injury. And in most cases, those events and conditions could have been altered. What we often think of as accidents aren’t really accidents at all, but preventable incidents. On a wide scale, injury can be prevented through public health initiatives.

Amend is having a fundraiser tomorrow in New York, a screening of City of God director Fernando Meirelles' new film, The Constant Gardener. I'd go if I were in town.