Article Text
Abstract
Objective: To determine the epidemiology of child drowning in order to propose possible interventions for Bangladesh and other similar low-income countries.
Design: Population-based cross-sectional study.
Setting: Rural and urban communities in Bangladesh.
Subjects: About 352 000 children 0–17 years were selected from over 171 000 households, using multistage cluster sampling.
Main outcome measures: Incidence of fatal drowning.
Results: Drowning was the leading cause of death (28.6 per 100 000 child-years) in children aged 1–17 years. The highest incidence (86.3 per 100 000 child-years) was in children aged 1–4 years. More than two-thirds of drownings occurred in ponds and ditches. Most drownings (85%) happened in daylight. In more than one-third of cases of drowning, the child was alone. In the two-thirds of cases in which the child was accompanied, almost half were with children who were 10 years or below. Only 7% of drowned children over 4 years of age knew how to swim.
Conclusions: Drowning is a major cause of childhood mortality in Bangladesh. Creating drowning-safe homes, improving supervision of children, modifying the environment, and developing water safety skills for children and the community may be effective interventions for drowning prevention.
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Footnotes
Contributors: AR participated in the design, implementation and supervision of field work and analysis and wrote the paper. SS and MH advised on project design and implementation and contributed to the writing of the paper. IJU helped in designing and developing the paper. ML and FR conceived the study and supervised throughout and contributed to the writing of the paper. SRM and SMC were responsible for implementation and supervision of field activities and contributed to the writing of the paper. MSG assisted in data management and analysis and contributed to the writing of the paper. IJU, ML and FR are guarantors.
Funding: UNICEF-Bangladesh and TASC.
Competing interests: None.