Becky Horsbrugh
DROWNING PREVENTION
I held out my hand to seven-yearold Salman and beckoned to him to get in. A huge grin swept across his face and he chuckled loudly as he ignored my assistance and instead jumped in the pond, splashing me with water. But I didn’t really care. I was as happy as he was, as I was achieving my ambition to help out with teaching swimming in rural Bangladesh. My trip had taken several months of planning and began when I first came across an article about, of all things, young girls playing cricket in the country. That led me to find out more about a British-run charity called Sreepur Village based around 60 kilometres north of the capital Dhaka, where the girls lived. I then began to read about how big an issue child drowning was in the country and how it was the leading cause of child death. I then knew I had to go there to try and help in whatever little way I could, being a qualified swimming teacher myself. The statistics really are quite shocking. Around 50 children a day die in Bangladesh in the water.
When you consider that is roughly the same number of children who drown every year in the UK you can understand how big an issue it is. The Centre for Injury Prevention and Research in Bangladesh (CIPRB) has been doing its best over the last few years to remedy the situation by setting up not only a swim programme, but also a nursery system so that young children receive more protection when their parents are busy. According to the CIPRB approximately 18,000 children under the age of 18 drown each year, with more than 80 per cent of the deaths occurring in natural bodies of water (ditches, ponds and canals) less than 20 metres from the house. Most drownings also occur in rural areas during the day between 9am-2pm when the mother is busy with housework or other chores and the child is left unsupervised.
MOST DROWNINGS OCCUR WHEN THE MOTHER IS BUSY WITH HOUSEWORK OR OTHER CHORES