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Abstract
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Every year, drowning claims the lives of more than 96 000 children and adolescents globally within the first two decades of their life, equivalent to 263 fatal drownings each day, or 11 deaths every hour.
There needs to be a concerted effort to ensure that the changing drowning risks that children and adolescents face as they grow up are addressed by evidence-based interventions that reach all children, along with the policies, investment and research needed to underpin that.
Combining good practice, and mainstreaming evidence-based solutions across diverse sectors, including health, child protection, education, infrastructure, transport and occupational safety, is critical to providing a system strengthening approach to drowning prevention.
Commitment is needed from governments, financial investors and key service providers, to support wide-spread implementation, sustainability and scale-up of what has been proven to work--including linkages to action for health, climate and environment.
Children have the right to a safe and healthy environment in which to live, learn and play. Every year, drowning claims the lives of more than 96 000 children and adolescents globally within the first two decades of their life, equivalent to 263 fatal drownings each day, or 11 deaths every hour.1 More than 90% of drowning deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with rates that are over three times higher than in high-income countries.2 In the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Region, children aged 5-14 years die more frequently from drowning than any other cause. In Bangladesh, annually drowning accounts for 43% of deaths among children aged 1-4 years.2
The world has made remarkable progress in child survival in the past 3 decades, and millions of children have better survival chances than in 1990. In 2021, 1 in 26 children died before the age of 5, compared with 1 in 11 in 1990.3 Investments to ensure under 5's survival (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.2) have been remarkably effective. Success must not be allowed to be undermined by injury deaths for those under or over the age of 5, and reducing child injury, including drowning deaths, is vital for all ages. The economic costs of lives lost due to drowning is high, with national estimates for Australia, Canada and the USA ranging from US$85 million to US$4.1 billion per year.4 While global drowning deaths have reduced over the last 2 decades, the rate of this decrease (8%), has been much lower in low-income countries than high-income nations (46%).1
Commitment to invest and act now is needed, across sectors, to implement combined drowning prevention interventions as part of the broader public health agenda. This must build on strong global political commitments for action secured through United Nation (UN) processes such as the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the World Health Assembly (WHA).
Political commitment supports action
Over the last 10-15 years several LMICs, especially in the high-burden Southeast Asia region have started to address drowning in their nations using evidence-based prevention interventions. Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka have all adopted proven child supervision approaches through adult-based day care, and survival swim skills training, as noted in the recent WHO investment case for drowning prevention.5 At government level, Bangladesh is making strong political commitments and taking bold practical action to address child drowning. However, more countries need to implement these interventions, especially where the burden is high. Action must be grounded in strong problem analysis and research, and the application of evidence-based and tested interventions must be implemented across and by diverse sectors, including but not limited to health, women and children's affairs, early childhood development, transport, and occupational safety...
Language: en |