Last month, the world was on tenterhooks as a tiny submersible, the Titan, with five persons inside it, was lost, thousands of feet under the North Atlantic’s surface, while it was attempting to take tourists to the remnants of the Titanic.
Rescue efforts were mounted in a race against time, only to find the sub had imploded shortly after descent, killing all five aboard. That same week, not even a patch on the news coverage of the Titan, was the sinking of a fishing boat off the Greek coast that had over 500 people on board, migrants, predominantly from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt, making it potentially the second deadliest refugee and migrant shipwreck to take place.
Children at high risk
Drowning deaths capture headlines from time to time, when they involve large numbers, or larger-than-life people, but what is less frequently mentioned, is the many drownings, predominantly of children that take place in India every day: according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s statistics for 2021, there were 36,362 drowning deaths reported, forming 9.3% of accidental deaths in the country.
Prevention, say experts, is the key to curbing drowning deaths in India, as rescue and resuscitation efforts may not always be timely or feasible. And prevention involves several measures, at the safe behavioural and infrastructural levels.
Children are at the largest risk of drowning in India, and even reported figures are an underestimate, as most cases never make it to the hospital and are not recorded, says Jagnoor Jagnoor of the George Institute for Global Health, co-director, WHO Collaborating Centre for injury prevention and trauma. “The risk is highest in the one to six year age group, followed by the 6 -14 year age group in India, especially in rural and remote areas. There is this perception that if a child grows up near a water body, he or she will automatically learn how to swim, but this is emphatically not true,” she says.
Dr Jagnoor points to two key aspects in the drowning deaths of children: the lack of supervision and the lack of physical barriers on waterbodies.
Safe space
Supervision, says Rakhi Dandona, professor at the Public Health Foundation of India and the University of Washington, needs to be thought of in a broad-based manner: “When a parent is working, either in the home or outside, there needs to a safe space available for the child. There is a tendency to apportion the responsibility and the blame on mothers alone, but this needs to change,” she says. While anganwadis, government-provided child care centres for children under six do function, they are not consistently present in all parts of the country, says Dr. Jagnoor. Access to and availability of safe spaces could go a long way in preventing drowning.
The other issue is the safe storage of water and barricading access to it where necessary. Measures such as these have shown some success in the Philippines, says Dr. Jagnoor, but involve behavioural change and sustained efforts to keep them going. “Safe storage needs to begin at home: a child can drown even in a bucket of water. Actionable awareness on this, for communities, is essential,” adds Dr Dandona.
The barricading of wells, ponds and other small waterbodies by government authorities and the prevention of unauthorised access are also necessary steps towards building safer environments and communities, according to Dr. Jagnoor.
This however, can be challenging as many open water sources are used by local communities for bathing and washing, says Dr. Dandona, adding: “One of the major problems is that we simply do not have enough information: we need more qualitative studies to pinpoint how our children are drowning.” This, she said, would also throw light on other, related issues that play a role in drownings: people forced to go to the toilet near a waterbody for instance, could fall in accidentally and drown, which would not take place if there was a toilet in the home.
Awareness
While accidental falls into waterbodies account for about 70 % of all drowning deaths as per the NCRB, there have also been multiple cases of young people and families going for a pleasure dip or to bathe, with these outings ending in tragedy, as also attempts to cross rivers, and boat capsizes. Such an incident occurred this April, when five young men, all aged between 18 and 24, drowned in a temple tank in Chennai, some reportedly, while trying to rescue others.
“We see cases where young people venture into waters that are not familiar to them – this could be the sea, quarries, ponds or rivers, and this is where awareness is crucial: to not venture in if you cannot swim, to look out for notices put up by the government about safe swimming spots and to not get carried away by peer pressure,” says a senior officer of the T.N. Fire & Rescue Services, adding that many who go into the water are unaware of factors such as depth and tides.
Selfies, she says, are another hazard: in an effort to get the best photograph of a scenic dam or a brimming river, many young persons have tragically lost their lives. “Avoid selfies at all costs in risky areas,” the officer says. “The highest number of ‘selfie-deaths’, from a global search has been reported in India and drowning was amongst the topmost reasons for deaths caused while taking selfies,” states the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s ‘Status of drowning in South-East Asia: Country reports’, 2022.
Flood casualties
Another major cause of concern, is drowning due to floods. A total of 656 people in India lost their lives due to flooding in 2021 states the NCRB. This, says Dr Dandona, points to the urgent need for better civic infrastructure and measures to tackle climate change. Post-event recovery and rehabilitative measures are also important, adds Dr Jagnoor., as drowning deaths may even occur due to waterlogging, sometimes many days post-flooding too.
Learning how to swim is often talked about as prevention of deaths, but while in an ideal scenario, all children would learn how to swim, in practical terms, this may not be possible. What is needed, says Dr Jagnoor, are State-specific policies that can be targeted to regions where interventions are needed: coastal villages, low-lying areas and wetland regions for instance.
The government is taking cognisance of drowning deaths: last year, the Centre established an expert committee to draft the Drowning Prevention Framework of India. Dr Dandona, who was a member, explains: “The strategy was aimed towards an inter-sectoral approach to drowning prevention.” In February 2022, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also released a ‘National Emergency Life Support’ provider course manual for paramedics that covered drowning, among other emergencies.
It may not always be accessible as a drinking source, but there’s water everywhere in the country: along our long coastline, meandering in our rivers and lakes and pooling in our wetlands, all crucial for survival. And while we rightly work on safeguarding these natural resources, we must also, simultaneously, safeguard people around them.
