Silent Killer

Written by Mohammed Ammar Bin Yaser • February 2011

Every year more than 350,000 children die from drowning in Asia. Bangladesh, a flood-prone nation of 156 million, ranks high on the list with 20,000 deaths reported annually. Studies show that death by drowning is one of the leading causes of child fatality in Bangladesh besides pneumonia and diarrhea.

Bangladesh is interwoven with myriads of rivers and inland waterways and every few years floods sweep the country which only serve to increase the death toll. Experts believe the issue goes highly under-reported since cases of this nature are mostly considered as ‘personal tragedies’ in rural areas and handled privately and also because there is hardly any mechanism to register such cases.

The staggering figures have alarmed the government in Bangladesh and NGOs and efforts are now being made to control the prevalence which is becoming deadly by the day.

Observers claim the government is not doing enough compared to the level of threat. Nevertheless, the efforts of the international community are impressive. Various international NGOs have beefed up their efforts to help the Bangladeshi social sector in tackling the dire situation. A workshop on child drowning prevention, recently held in Dhaka, was billed as the first of its kind. Here health experts, policy advisers and agencies from Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and Denmark gathered to discuss the problem of child drowning in Asia.

The three day workshop was organized by the International Drowning Research Centre, Bangladesh, a consortium of International Life Saving members, the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research Bangladesh, The Alliance for Safe Children and Royal Life Saving Society, Australia.

Experts agreed that child drowning is one of the top child killers in Asia and lamented the lack of attention given to this immensely grave issue. They pointed out that lack of advocacy, awareness and training among the rural populace is the leading cause of the high death toll in such cases.

The causes of child death by drowning are more or less the same in all developing countries of Asia. The extent of unawareness amongst the people of some rural Asian regions (Bangladesh included) can be gauged by the fact that the frequent recurrence of drowning has pushed them to come up with various explanations like evil spirits enticing the child to go into the water or the mother forgetting about the child.

Experts debunk such myths and look for effective strategies to counter child drowning. If implemented, such approaches can dramatically reduce the death toll and could also make it an issue of the past.

Evidence from recent pilot studies conducted in rural Bangladesh show positive results. But more intervention is required. They unanimously agree that more resources are needed to establish interaction and involvement at various levels.

Prevention measures like training older children to swim, instructing mothers to be more careful with their infants can and has worked but more resources are required to expand the canvas of such efforts.

The Director of the International Drowning Research Centre, Bangladesh, Dr. Aminur Rahman has said that workshops like the one organized by the International Drowning Research Centre, will greatly help professionals develop a concrete strategy to tackle the issue of child drowning.

“For the first time ever, we have a blueprint of ways to prevent drowning in children in our country and in other low and middle income countries. This is such a significant step in reducing the leading killer of children in the region,” he said.