Keywords: prehospital care, health systems, geographic information systems (GIS)

Background:
Road traffic injuries are a substantial source of global mortality and morbidity, with > 90% occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Many of them lack prehospital care systems critical for survival. The World Health Organisation recommends the implementation of Lay First Responder (LFR) programs as a foundational step. Cameroon is a Central African country with a higher-than-expected injury burden and the development of a context-tailored LFR program necessitates an understanding of local injury (Fig 1).

Objective:
In the absence of a robust injury surveillance system, this study characterises geospatial injury patterns across Limbe.

Methods:
Using a mixed-method, cross sectional approach, we gathered data from three sources: Cameroon Trauma Registry, Ministry of Public Health, and Limbe Health District (Fig 2). Data were merged using geo-coordinates. Field notes were gathered at each healthcare facility using an orally administered seven-item semi-structured questionnaire by two researchers. Injury data were stratified and analysed with Stata 16.1, QGIS 3.40, and Datawrapper.

Results:
A CTR query stratified injury cases by neighbourhoods that were included if there were ≥2 injuries when stratified by injury severity scores. Neighbourhoods were grouped as MOPH Health Areas and calculated as proportions (n=10). Between February and March 2025, we surveyed 33 health facilities across Limbe (63%) regarding their local injury patterns (Table 1).

Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that there is a geospatial pattern among injuries across Limbe, with most of them occurring in major thoroughfares and urban settings. However, when stratified by source and proportion, healthcare facilities reported injury-prone areas that were not included in CTR and MOPH reports. This discrepancy highlights the need for improved, standardised injury-reporting systems that enable robust injury surveillance. Future research should be directed at implementing standardised reporting to improve health and injury surveillance capacity in efforts to develop a context-tailored LFR pilot.