Child Drowning

Figure 19: Resuscitation received by drowning children (aged 0-17 years)
100%
80%
Trained resuscitation Traditional resuscitation No resuscitation Unknown
60%
40%
20%
0%
Bangladesh Jiangxi, China Cambodia
Source: Survey data from the countries included: Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey 2003, Cambodia Accident and Injury
Survey 2006 and Jiangxi (China) Injury Survey 2005.
On average, less than 10 per cent of drowning victims received resuscitation from a trained responder.
This reflects both the lack of widespread resuscitation skills in the population and the fact that most
drowning occurred in settings where resuscitation was not possible. The majority of drowning occurred
among very young children who escaped supervision and drowned. Their caretakers were unaware of
the drowning for lengthy periods of time and resuscitation was not an option. The majority of the
drowning incidents among older children occurred when they were alone, or with a peer that lacked
swimming, rescue or resuscitation skills.
For every country studied, when traditional resuscitation was given, the methods used were ineffective
and harmful, and may have contributed to the drowning fatality. These methods generally fell into three
categories:
1. Attempts to expel water from the drowned child’s body by physical force (e.g. whirling the child
overhead, pressing or jumping on the child’s chest and stomach).
2. Attempts to expel water from the drowning child by inciting vomiting or coughing (e.g. forcing
rotten food or other noxious substances into the child’s mouth to induce vomiting, or inserting
sticks or other objects into the child’s trachea to induce coughing), and:
3. Attempts to expel water from the drowned child’s body through physical means that involved
drying (e.g. covering the child in ashes or in mud, heating the child’s body over a warm fire).
These practices were found across the different cultures in the surveys. They were widely cited by
respondents, regardless of level of educational attainment or rural or urban location. As such, they
represent broad social norms in response practices to drowning in children. To be effective, drowning
interventions will need to take into account the deeply embedded nature of these behaviours and to
design appropriate strategies to counteract them.
The lessons learned from combating diarrhoeal diseases may be useful in this regard. Many of the early
interventions focused on stopping deeply ingrained harmful behaviours, such as ceasing breastfeeding
when the child had diarrhoea, or feeding the child solids in an attempt to decrease the diarrhoea.
Changing these pervasive behaviours required extensive and long-term behavioural change
interventions. Given the rural concentration and generally low educational attainment of mothers,
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