SEATTLE, Washington The Dominican Republic has made moderate improvements toward U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, which aims for good health and wellbeing in a population. In spite of this headway, the country still has major obstacles to overcome – including high rates of traffic deaths, adolescent fertility and child mortality – before it can consider SDG 3 accomplished.
Traffic Deaths
Frequent traffic deaths pose one problem impeding the Dominican Republic’s public health agenda. In fact, the Dominican Republic has the highest rate of traffic deaths per person in the Americas. The rate of traffic deaths in the small Caribbean country was 29.3 per 100,000 people in 2013. By 2016, it increased to 34.6 per 100,000. That same year, average rates in Europe totaled only 9.3 per 100,000 people.