IN AN AGE of ethnic conflict, fatal disease and chronic malnutrition, it
seems strange to stumble across figures such as this: 388,000 people die every
year from drowning, according to the World Health Organization.
To put this number in
perspective, drowning accounts for nearly 1 in 10 deaths worldwide. It is the
third-leading cause of unintentional death. It is also the greatest cause of
injury and unintentional death among children younger than 5 in both the United
States and Asia. This is a problem that traverses the developed and developing
worlds.
Predictably, however, those from
poorer countries are at higher risk: The rate of death by drowning in Asia is
30 times higher than in the United States. In Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and
Thailand, drowning is responsible for 1 in 4 child deaths — more than the
number who die from measles, polio, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria and
tuberculosis combined.
What makes this public health
crisis particularly problematic is that, unlike fatal disease and chronic
malnutrition, drowning is not an issue at the forefront of humanitarian aid
efforts. Drowning has gone largely unnoticed as a serious health matter because
death counts, which rely primarily on hospital reports, fail to take drowning
into account. Michael Linnan, technical director at the Alliance for Safe
Children, told the Integrated Regional Information Networks that “the child
drowning epidemic has been invisible.”
The Alliance for Safe Children
and UNICEF’s Office of Research released a report in May that found that nearly
all drowning-induced deaths are preventable. Instead of allowing this problem
to languish unaddressed, governments should mobilize support for demonstrably
effective and low-cost prevention strategies. The report emphasized the
long-term value of teaching children over the age of 4 SwimSafe techniques —
swimming and rescue training — a program that reduced drowning rates by 90
percent in a research program in Bangladesh. Building low-cost bridges and
other barriers is also an effective way to protect unsupervised children from water
hazards.
Gordon Alexander, director of
UNICEF’s Office of Research, said that such “affordable interventions” could
“save hundreds of thousands of children’s lives.” When the data are so clear
and the solutions so straightforward, it is time to address what Mr. Alexander
correctly termed this “hidden killer.”
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