Little awareness can cut drowning death rate
Dhaka: Two-year-old twins Mahmud Hasan and Mainul Hossain drowned in a pond at Dharmapur village in Chatkhil upazila in Noakhali on 4 March.
According to the family, the sons of Shahidullah, an expatriate living in Saudi Arabia, somehow slipped into the pond while playing on its bank adjacent to their house at about 10:00am. Later, their bodies were found floating in the pond.
Sajib, 5, son of Babul Mia and Aktar Hossain, 4, son of Md Alamgir, went down in a pond at Montola village at Faridganj, Chandpur on 8 February.
On 27 February, Manik, a two-year-old son of Rasel, a street vendor, drowned in Buriganga, as the toddler tried to proceed to one of his relatives bathing in the river, police said.
Locals later fished him out and rushed him to Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH), where he was declared dead.
Many tiny tots drown in the waterbodies across the country every day, bringing a lifelong trauma for their families and the loved ones.
According to Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey (BHIS-2005), drowning is a leading cause of death among children aged 1-17 year in the country, with approximately 18,000 children dying each year.
But a little awareness can play a big role in bringing down the mortality caused by drowning significantly.
According to the child health researchers, steps like awareness campaign, increasing awareness among parents, effective social and family security and providing swimming lessons can reduce the fatality in drowning.
Experts said drowning deaths occur mostly in rainy season. The chance of death from drowning is more if any waterbody exists near the house.
Considering the depth of this accident among the children, Centre for Injury Prevention and Research Bangladesh (CIPRB), with the financial assistance from the UNICEF and technical support from the government of Bangladesh and The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), took an ‘experimental initiative’ in 2005.
This project has proved the fact that bringing down the number of (drowning) deaths is possible if the children are provided with swimming lesson, they are barred from their way to the waterbodies and social awareness can be created.
According to different reports, the rate of deaths from drowning is much higher in rural areas compared to the cities. News of such deaths heard in the capital too, and the slum children are mainly victims of it.
Most of the slums are raised on different waterbodies. Children, on many occasions without any swimming lesson, play in the waterbodies diving and bathing with their buddies, and often drown and die.
‘When a child drowns, his or her lung gets filled with water, resulting in shortage of oxygen. He or she becomes senseless and subsequently dies as the brain gets no oxygen.
That is why, making them to breathe again in cases of drowning is very important. In many cases, they die because of cold too,’ said Dr Rabi Biswas, an associate professor of Dhaka Shishu Hospital.
CIPRB executive director professor Fazlur Rahman said, ‘Children aged not more than five years are falling victims to drowning because of lack of proper supervision, while the children aged five to eighteen are dying for lack of swimming lesson.’
But there is some good news as the CIPRB has launched a project titled ‘Anchal’ for children aged not more than five years. The pioneering scheme has been undertaken to safeguard young children during the peak time of risk of drowning.
Under the programme, the children are kept in a daycare centre under a lady designated for the duty from 9:00am to 1:00pm, the time when the children are more likely to fall victims to accident than any other time during the day.
Apart from this, parents are made aware to raise fence around pond or ditch, giving them lesson in first aid, providing drowning victims with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and rushing them to medical centres.
Moreover, children aged four or more are being given swimming lesson, while the mothers are being provided with playpen for keeping their toddlers safe. Though 65,000 children are being raised across the country under the project, the scheme is still running on fund provided by the donors.
However talks are underway to include the scheme in the government-run projects and the authorities concerned are ‘very positive’ about this.