It was monsoon season; the entire beel was covered with red and white shapla flowers [water Lily]. Sajia and Abdul came out silently of their house and took the small boat of their father to pick shapla. Abdul hold the paddle while Sajia started collecting shapla on the boat with her small hands.
But suddenly, the boat turned turtle being hit with a wooden log. The seven-year-old Abdul franticly tried to save his five-year-old sister Sajia, but she drowned. Later, with the help of other people, the body of Sajia was recovered. In spite of bringing shapla, Abdul brought the body of his loveliest sister to their home. The tragic incident was occurred at Binajuri village under Raozan upazila in Chittagong district last year.
Like Sajia, a good number of children die each and every year in Bangladesh due to drowning. It happens not only in remote villages, but also in the city areas. Most of the deaths are not reported to the police stations apparently to avoid legal complications. The statistics provided by Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey, one child is drowned in every thirty minutes while the mortality rate stands at 50 per day. It says about 18,000 children [1-17 years] die due to drowning each year. Of them, children age limit 5-17 years old die for not knowing how to swim.
It was another tragic incident of last year. Ten-year-old Meem was playing with a tennis ball near their house at Beraid in the city’s Badda area. Suddenly, the ball fell in the pond. Meem ran to the pond to pick the ball from water but she slipped. The pond was deep and Meem drowned. Seeing the child drowning, Meem’s mother came to rescue her daughter. But she did not know how to swim. As a result, she also drowned. Later, local people recovered the bodies of mother and daughter from the water.
Significantly, the drowning is claiming lives of adults too. In many cases, the grown-up persons die when they try to save their children, or near and dear ones. As per an approximate estimation, about 22, 000 people, including adults above 18 years, drown per year. Particularly, the heavy monsoon rains, which affected directly around 1.5 crore people, witness an alarming increase in drowning deaths. Meanwhile, the government officials concerned say they are determined to stop the public health epidemic which causes 43 per cent of deaths between the ages of one and four-more than measles, cholera, diarrhea and pneumonia combined. In line with the policy, the government has set up an International Drowning Research Centre [IDRC], which has made mandatory swimming lessons to stop this ‘silent epidemic.’ According to the ministry of education, the swimming lessons have already been made compulsory in schools, particularly in urban areas. Apart from it, the swimming lesson programs have also been held by UNICEF in different areas in collaboration with SwimSafe, a non-government organisation. When contacted, Director General of Secondary and Higher Education Directorate Professor Fahima Khatun on Wednesday says: “About 20, 000 educational institutions are under my jurisdictions. Of them, we’re facing problems regarding 500-600 schools in the city.”
“I think most of the village students know swimming well. To gear up the lessons in the city areas, we’ve sent notice to the city schools. We can hope, the city school administrations are following the guidelines,” the DG says. But several guardians alleged that most of the city schools including the kindergartens do not follow the government instruction. They do not arrange any class on swimming even in years. “My son is reading in a school from class one. He is now in class six. But I never heard of any swimming class in his school. I’m taking him to a nearby swimming pool once in a week,” said.
Sabira Begum, a guardian of Mirpur section-11, who does not want to disclose name of the school
for the sake of her son’s future. Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh [CIPRB] has identified some vital reasons for the unnatural deaths, such as – increase of global warming, heavy rain, flood, stagnant water, increase of ditches, holes and other water bodies near residence. The CIPRB, however, suggested adopting four initiatives to check drowning deaths. These are: the children aged 10 months to 3 years should be under strict surveillance of family members; especially their mothers and they must learn swimming when they are 4 years of age. Secondly, the ponds and other water bodies adjacent to the residences should be encircled with fence. Thirdly, the victims must be provided with effective primary health care support to normalise their breathing soon after rescued from the water. In the fourth and final stage, the victim should be rushed to nearby hospital, or certified physician.
Experts say children die every day because they are vulnerable to open bodies of water such as ponds, ditches, lakes, rivers and the sea. They said initiatives to teach swimming to children aged over four years can help reduce 98 percent of deaths, though it is hard to teach swimming in urban areas due to lack of pools.
According to World Health Organisation [WHO], drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, accounting for 7 per cent of all injury-related death.
There are an estimated 3, 72, 000 annual drowning deaths worldwide. Over half of the world’s drowning occurs in the Western Pacific Region and South-East Asia Region.
