Child Drowning

interventions required a variety of communications channels and a focus on trans-generational
behavioural change.
Changing harmful resuscitation responses will require the same scope and scale of investment.
Increasing access to primary education, embedding health messaging in educational curricula and
broader penetration of new communication technologies will be helpful; however changing behavioural
norms is a difficult and time-consuming process and will require a lengthy and comprehensive effort.
Significant health and social investments are lost when a child drowns
Drowning rates are highest in early childhood, at which stage most health investments for the young
child have already been made. Examples are antenatal care and immediate postnatal care delivered to
mothers and infants, and vitamin A, zinc and other micronutrient supplementation. At the point where
child drowning rates are highest in the countries surveyed (16-24 months), a young child has received
almost all immunizations and many have benefited from early child development and other child
enrichment programmes.
Figure 20 shows the percentage of children 1-4 years old in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Thailand who
had been immunized prior to their fatal drowning.
Figure 20: Immunization status of drowned children (aged 1-4) in Bangladesh (2003), Cambodia (2007)
and Thailand (2004)
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Bangladesh Cambodia Thailand
Immunization status unknown
Fully immunized according to
EPI schedule
Partially immunized according
to EPI schedule
Source: Authors’ calculations from the Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey 2003, the Cambodia Accident and Injury Survey
2007 and the Thai National Injury Survey 2004.
The loss of the health and social investments made in these young children by their drowning deaths
represents a major indirect cost, as well as the loss of their future potential. Given that drowning is also
a leading cause of child death among primary and secondary school-aged children, educational
investments are also lost when older children drown.
Drowning during floods is an unrecognized or unstated cause of mortality
While it might seem self-evident that drowning is a cause of child death in floods, commonly drowning
is not mentioned as a cause of death. Usually the major health threats identified with floods are
infectious diseases. Even UNICEF has been somewhat short-sighted in its coverage of this issue. An
example is the story in the The State of the World’s Children 2011 report on climate change in Pakistan
where the threat of infectious disease following flooding is discussed but there is no mention of
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