Egypt’s Health Minister Hala Zayed discussed on Monday with the United Nations Special Envoy for Road Safety Jean Todt the government's efforts to reduce fatality rates and injuries resulting from road accidents through the implementation of a safety plan for the highways nationwide.

According to the health ministry’s statement, in a meeting in Cairo, Todt discussed with Zayed and Minister of Transportation Kamel El-Wazir ways to boost road safety in Egypt with the cooperation of the UN to limit road accidents.

Zayed reviewed during the meeting efforts by the health ministry to tackle the issue, including increasing the number of ambulances on highways, as well as raising the readiness standards in emergency rooms in the hospitals.

She also revealed that there is a nationwide campaign in cooperation with the interior ministry's  traffic department to conduct drug tests for drivers in order to reduce accidents.

Zayed added that there is a need to launch awareness campaigns in cooperation with other ministries in order to reduce road accidents by highlighting wrong practices.

Meanwhile, El-Wazir stressed during the meeting that applying a smart transportation system would reduce road accidents nationwide.

He also highlighted that the current megaprojects involving road networks in the country managed to reduce road accident rates.

The UN special envoy praised the Egyptian government's efforts in achieving road safety.

Deadly road accidents take place on a near-daily basis in Egypt, which suffers from poorly maintained road infrastructure and loosely applied traffic regulations.

However, the government’s efforts in recent years to upgrade roads have brought improvements in recent years.

On Sunday, during the inauguration of the Smart Transportation Exhibition, El-Wazir announced that development in the road and highway sectors in Egypt managed to reduce road accident fatalities by 44% during 2019/2020.

He also added that Egypt was ranked 28th in 2019 in terms of the quality of road infrastructure in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Report, up from 118th place in 2014.