Drowning death rates have dropped 38% since 2000. Here’s how

Here is another episode of “things you can achieve when you actually work together to use science to solve a big problem.” The World Health Organization with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies published its first report on the prevention of drowning that brought to the surface a great history of success. Since last year, the world of drowning deaths has fallen by 38% since 2000. Although there is even more work to do as the average number of drowning remains over 30, this decline did not happen by chance to say so. It happened after the WHO, the Bloomberg Philanthropy, various national governments and various local organizations gathered to use the thing called science to help reduce the drowning.

“The significant decline in drowning deaths since 2000 is a great news and test that simple practical interventions that recommend work,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreesus, PhD, OBSH Director General, in a statement. “Still, every suffocated death is a very death, and millions of people remain at risk. This report contains essential data on policy creation and recommendations for urgent action to save lives.”

Implementation of evidence -based interventions to prevent drowning death

From “simple, practical interventions”, the Director General of WHO was referring to evidence-based interventions such as:

• Installation of barriers to prevent children from entering water: Because young children themselves and water often do not mix well. I have described for stale Earlier how drowning was the leading cause of deaths among young children.
• Providing safe away from water for preschoolers: Young people may not always be well served by water with nearly half of those who die from drowning are under 29 years old and a quarter to be less than five years old.
• Teaching children of basic water safety school age and safe rescue skills: A Red Cross study from a decade ago found that 61% of children did not have basic swimming security skills
• Training of people in salvation and resurrection: Of course, when someone is drowning, you don’t have everyone to go, “Umm, what to do?”
• Strengthening public awareness of drowning: Many people may not be aware of how much risk of drowning or the size of the drowning problem, such as about 300,000 people dying in just one year, 2021.
• Setting and implementing safe rules of walking, transportation and ferry: According to the American Society of Boating, drowning has been the cause of a report of death in 75% of the fatal walk -in accidents in the US
• Improving Flood Risk Management: Floods bring water where it is not supposed to be.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has already invested a total of $ 104 million over the years through its initiative to prevent drowning to support such Texas prevention interventions.

“Part of these efforts has been to grow more awareness of drowning,” explained Becky Bavinger, who works on the public health team in Bloomberg philanthropies. “There is a misconception that drowning is not preventable a God’s action.”

Most falling deaths occur in countries with low and middle income

While many of the best things in life can be free, this is not always always worth always for safety, health and public health measures. The aforementioned interventions require investments to be implemented before possible benefits and savings. That is why it should not be surprising that people in the lower resource environments have higher drowning risks. In fact, nine of every 10 drowning deaths take place in low and middle -income countries. Plus, such places are low and middle income often because they have the disaster to settle in less favorable and tougher environments. Raven rains, floods, troubled water and other such conditions make navigation inside and around the most treacherous water.

It is also not extremely surprising that progress in reducing drowning deaths has been unequal all over the world. Whereas the European region of the WHO experienced a 68% decrease in such deaths from 2000 to 2021, the African WHO region without only a 3% decline over the same time period. The African WHO region continued to have the highest level of each region at 5.6 deaths per 100,000 people.

But the stories of the success of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative to prevent drowning so far suggest that many of the challenges facing lmics can be overcome. For example, in Bangladesh, Bloomberg Philanthropies has helped support community children’s care for over 50,000 children across the country. And in Viet Nam, since 2019, she has worked with the government to offer swimming classes for survival for children. This has already helped over 28,000 children in 13 provinces to pass a swimming course.

Lack of national data and strategies for drowning death

A constant problem with preventing drowning is the problem you don’t know-what you don’t know. Many countries do not even know enough about the factors around the risk they may have and the causes of past drowning. In fact, they may not even know how many muted deaths have happened. They were missing the data. And making decisions without appropriate data can be conjectured.

Bavinger emphasized that it is not enough to know simply the number of drowning deaths and the approximate age and sex of the victims: “Basic demographics is not a completely story. We often did not know the basic circumstances. “Therefore, a large part of the initiative to prevent drowning has been to increase and strengthen data collection and analysis efforts.

Another constant problem has been the lack of national strategies to prevent drowning. In the European region, 45% of countries have a kind of national strategy or plan to prevent drowning. This is not an excellent number, but still higher than the 15% number for the African region. “It will be important to match the policies with the burden,” Bavinger said. She went to say that most countries have no policy to surround the pools and only one minority has national swimming and training as part of their curricula.

“Drowning continues to be a major issue of public health, but progress is possible, especially if governments work with strong partners at the local level,” Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies, who said the Global Ambassador for Non -Communicable Diseases and Injuries and 108.

Climate change can increase the risk of drowning deaths

Although things seem to be going in the right direction, there is a great global thing that is going in the wrong direction: climate change. Climate change has led to all kinds of changes that can increase the risk of drowning. “Changing the climate can lead to more extreme weather events, spoiling rain, flash flood and other things,” Bavinger explained.

Bavinger continued to talk about the need to strengthen the weather alarms and make sure they are up -to -date. After all, the words “heavy rains” and “let’s go to swimming” do not go well together. Increasing public awareness of the weather will increase more and more important with climate change, especially with “more people turning into water for recreation, which is understandable, but means increased risk”, as Bavinger described. She mentioned how migration of people around the world can change the risk situation as well.

Another major concern is what is happening in Washington, DC, now. Who knows what long -term negative impact is the Trump administration plan to attract the US to who it will have? The same is true for USAID dismantling and abbreviations in support of other government agencies that help facilitate cooperation and international work.

Continuing work to prevent the death of drowning

So, while the past work has helped bring the problem of drowning more to the surface and result in the aforementioned points in the death rates, the world is certainly not yet out of water. “Things have improved and reached there,” Bavinger said. Bloomberg philanthropies “was carried out by 2027, $ 60 million to work in high -loading countries.” Cooperation across the globe will help significantly. Leave them all under water in more ways than one.