GENEVA, Switzerland – It is now emerging that the global drowning fatality rate has decreased by 38% since 2000, from 6.1 to 3.8 deaths per 100,000 people.
Notwithstanding these advancements, drowning deaths continue to be an avoidable public health emergency, and the decreases over the previous 20 years are insufficient to achieve the numerous SDGs that drowning prevention helps to achieve.
What are the risk factors associated with drowning
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), young children are especially vulnerable to drowning because they lack swimming and water safety abilities and have an imprecise sense of risk. When kids play with water without active adult supervision, their risk of drowning rises.
More than half (57%) of drowning deaths occur in children and young adults ages 0 to 29. Children ages 0–4 have the highest drowning rates per population. The WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region has the highest regional drowning rates among children aged 0–4 years, with 16.8 deaths per 100,000. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children aged 5-14 in the WHO Western Pacific Region.
Y News has learnt that male drowning mortality is more than twice that of female drowning mortality. Additionally, hospitalisation for non-fatal drowning is more common in males than in girls. According to studies, male drowning rates are higher because of increased water exposure and riskier behaviours like boating, swimming alone, and drinking alcohol before swimming alone.
Poor and marginalised persons are disproportionately affected by drowning. The pattern of everyday exposure in low- and middle-income nations increases the danger of drowning, whether it is through the use of open wells for water collection or ponds, rivers, or lakes for bathing and garment washing.
People who work in jobs like commercial or subsistence fishing are much more likely to drown. According to estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, over 32,000 fishermen perish while at work each year. Because extreme weather and natural catastrophes are becoming more frequent and devastating, climate change has made the dangerous conditions that most fishermen work in worse.
Extreme weather events like heat waves and floods are becoming more frequent due to climate change. Seventy-five percent of flood disaster deaths are caused by drowning. In low- and middle-income nations with inadequate early warning systems and flood mitigation facilities, the risk of drowning from floods is very significant.
Drowning is more likely during heat waves. More people seek out water to relieve their heat when temperatures rise, and they usually spend more time in and on the water.
Y News has established that drowning risk can be increased when travelling on water, especially in hazardous weather or without the proper safety gear. Compared to high-income nations, water transport is far less controlled in many low- and middle-income nations. Daily commutes frequently occur on crowded, dangerous ships that are run by employees who lack the training necessary to identify dangerous situations or navigate at high seas.
Conflict, political and/or economic instability, and climate change are all contributing factors to the growing number of individuals who are relocating or migrating. Many choose highly dangerous irregular migration routes, such as traversing vast bodies of water in perilous weather, frequently in packed, unsafe vessels that are either unequipped for safety or run by inexperienced staff.
How drowning can be prevented
Drowning can be avoided in a number of ways. Water hazard exposure and risk are significantly decreased by fencing swimming pools, covering wells, utilising playpens and doorway barriers, and generally limiting access to water hazards.
Preschoolers who attend community-based, supervised daycare have been shown to have various health benefits, including a lower risk of drowning. Another strategy is to teach school-age children the fundamentals of swimming, water safety, and safe rescue techniques. However, these initiatives must be carried out with a focus on safety and a comprehensive risk management strategy that includes student-teacher ratios set for safety, screening and student selection procedures, a safe training environment, and curricula that have been proven to be safe.
According to a WHO investment case model, scaling up just two treatments will save money on drowning prevention between now and 2050. 774 000 fewer children would drown between now and 2050 if daycare programs for preschoolers were funded and basic swimming lessons were taught. Additionally, within the same time period, an additional 178 000 children would be spared serious, life-threatening injuries from non-fatal drowning. It is anticipated that scaling up these two initiatives will save more than $400 billion, which is nine times the cost of doing so.
Y News understands that effective laws and practices are also critical to preventing drowning. To increase water safety and prevent drowning, safe boating, shipping, and ferry laws must be established and strictly enforced. Drowning during flood catastrophes can be avoided by increasing flood resilience and controlling flood hazards through improved land use planning, early warning systems, and disaster preparedness planning.
The creation of a national water safety strategy can facilitate monitoring and assessment of initiatives while offering strategic direction and a framework to lead multisectoral action.
How WHO is responding to the global drowning cases
Although the number of drowning deaths has decreased dramatically in recent years, drowning is still a serious and frequently disregarded worldwide health concern, according to the worldwide Status Report on Drowning Prevention. Prioritising drowning prevention and integrating it with other public health priorities requires governments to support tried-and-true preventative strategies.
The first-ever resolution on drowning prevention was adopted by the UN General Assembly in April 2021. It emphasised the connections between drowning prevention and disaster risk reduction, social fairness, urban health, climate change, sustainable development, and child health and well-being. The Resolution designated July 25 as World Drowning Prevention Day and urged WHO to coordinate multisectoral drowning prevention initiatives within the UN system.
Y News knows that a resolution to expedite additional action through 2029 was adopted by the Seventy-sixth World Health Assembly in May 2023. WHO pledged in the Resolution to form a Global Alliance for Drowning Prevention including UN agencies, international development partners, and nongovernmental organisations. Additionally, in 2024, WHO will issue a global status report on drowning prevention.
In a number of low- and middle-income nations, WHO is collaborating with health ministries to assist the implementation of evidence-based drowning prevention treatments and to guide the creation of national drowning prevention policies. Furthermore, WHO has provided funding for studies examining priority issues in drowning prevention in low-income nations. WHO hosts seminars and training sessions at the regional level to bring together government, non-governmental, and UN agencies involved in drowning prevention.
