April 2018 is a day that the Musa family will never forget, the mother of Abdulaziz, Halima Musa is still shocked as to how her eight-month-old baby would have managed to get drowned in a drum of water just few minutes after she left him to ease herself in the bathroom which is outside their room, even the operatives of the Edo state Command are still investigating how an eight-month-old baby boy would have drowned in the house.
The incident which occurred in the early hours of Wednesday at number 53, Obakhavbaye Street in Benin City, the Edo State capital still had neighbours puzzled as to how such incident could have occurred.
Some months back, a famous Nigerian Celebrity lost his son to drowning, the son who was left unattended to fell into the swimming pool and before he was discovered, he was already dead.
Also in April 2018, a final year computer science student of the Isfop-Benin University, Cotonou, Aliyu Abubakar was reported to have drowned in a beach in Cotonou just few weeks to his graduation while another report revealed a public administration student of the Federal Polytrechnic, Ekowe, Bayelsa state identified as Adekunle drowned in a river close to the school when he went to fetch water due to lack of water in the campus.
In August 2018, seven members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) drowned in a river southeast of Taraba State when they went on a swimming expedition in River Mayo-Selbe, a major tributary of the Benue River.
In 2007, a famous Nigeria television survival show was suspended after a contestant drowned in preparation for the programme; Anthony Ogadje who was 25 and nine other contestants had gone to Shere Hills Lake in Nigeria’s hilly Plateau State to prepare for the show when he drowned in a river he was supposed to cross, all attempts to revive him by the attendant medical team and the life-guards, including his fellow contestants, failed.
While in Niger state, thousands drown yearly from flood which occurs between April to October yearly; this and many more deaths result from drowning, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 372,000 people die yearly from drowning out of which over half of all the drowning deaths occur among young people under 25 years and have become one of the 10 leading causes of death for people under this age group.
Drowning has been said to be the third leading cause of unintentional injury death and the drowning death rates in the African region is 20 times higher than those of other continents.
WHO reports that 135,585 children under 15 years lose their lives each year globally from drowning and drowning has been rated the leading cause of death and disability adjusted years among children under 15.
Drowning accounts for 75 per cent of deaths in flood disasters which is becoming more frequent especially in low and middle income countries where people live in flood prone areas and the ability to warn, evacuate or protect the communities from flood is weak.
However, WHO has posited that drowning is preventable only if the government of all nations can develop a national water safety plan which would provide strategic direction and a framework to guide multisectoral efforts to prevent drowning.
The Coordinator, Department of Management, Non Communicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention at the World Health Organization, Dr. David Meddings during the Merit Maker Field Trip which was part of the activities of the 13th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion in Thailand said that governments world over need to take a clue from the Thailand government in bringing down the high rate of drowning among its populace.
He said that there are various strategies of preventing child drowning pointing out that one of the most effective strategies is installing barriers controlling access to water which include covering wells, using doorway barriers and play pens, fencing swimming pools and having a community based supervised day care centers for preschool children.
For children older than four years and above, there is the need to teach them basic swimming, water safety and safe rescue skills which can go a long way to preventing drowning, “with these skills, the children and youths can survive for hours in water and this would go a long way in reducing drowning”, Meddings said.
He further stated that effective policies and legislation are also important for drowning prevention pointing out that setting and enforcing safe boating, shipping ad ferrying regulations, building resilience to flooding and managing flood risks through better disaster preparedness planning and early warning systems can go a long way in preventing drowning.
Meddings urged governments across the world to emulate the Thailand government’s strategy which had succeeded in reducing drowning incidents rate by 50 per cent through its national drowning prevention strategy called ‘Merit Maker’ which was taken from the implementation guide of preventing drowning by WHO which covers six measures and four strategies on drowning prevention for government to review and implement.
Giving an explanation about the Merit Maker program, the Vice Governor of Surat Thani Province in Thailand, Mrs. Jamjit Poolsawadee said Thailand had a record 9,547 children dying from drowning in the last ten years adding that the high rate of death recorded by drowning led the government of Thailand to develop a the Merit Maker drowning prevention strategy program.
She disclosed that the Merit Maker drowning prevention covers all ten elements that are important measures for preventing drowning which include policy, management, situation and date, risky water body management, child development center operations, knowledge dissemination, survival swimming training, CPR training, public communications and research/evaluation adding that children as little as three to four years are being tuaght basic drowning prevention skills.
The Vice Governor also said with the introduction of the drowning prevention program, drowning incidents rate had decreased to more than 50 per cent as 708 incidents were recorded in 2017 as against the 957 deaths experienced yearly in the past.
A recent survey carried out indicated that several children tend to drown because they lack the knowledge of water safety and correct rescue procedures which the Merit Maker program seek to address. Drowning prevention measures should cover risk factors related to both personal and environmental aspects as only one measure or action cannot properly deal with the problem.
If Nigeria can take a cue from these program, it will go a long way in reducing tgebrate of drowning across the Nation.
Dr. Olakunle Alonge, an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health in John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is of the opinion that Nigeria will not pay serious focus on drowning when the Nation still deals with maternal mortality, communicable diseases, infant mortality and other deaths lamenting that there is no data regarding the rate of drowning in the country.
“There are so many issues in Nigeria and drowning does not come on the top. Nigeria is still dealing with maternal mortality, communicable diseases, infant mortality and so on. There is a huge burden of drowning in Nigeria and I think the first step is to get data that speaks to the burden, to first characterize the size of the problem.
“The next step is to discover what are the underlined factors for this burden before we begin to talk about solutions.”
Alonge urged leaders in Nigeria to take examples from practices nations have implemented that have reduced the rate of drowning, “There are solutions that are already in play in some countries like Thailand and Bangadash but there is need to do a thorough job of understanding the probkem and risks of the burden that is associated with this factor. We run the risk of going for the wrong solutions to solve the problem if this understanding is not made.”
Advancing some solutions, he said the less cost intensive solution to drowning in the country will be to set up daycare centers, initiate survival swimming for children six years and above and incorporating swimming into school curriculum.
“Nigeria can take cue from nations where people are beginning to embed swimming within the school curriculum. It can be put in as physical education that is being done in Nigeria. There are so many schools doing physical education in Nigeria and I encourage the government to put in survival swimming, it will go a long way to reduce drowning casualties across the country. ”
Currently, schools, especially public schools in the country have not incorporated swimming into its curriculum due to the absence of swimming pools, only few private schools have swimming pools which had made it possible for the students to learn how to swim but the ratio is to minute.
A study of the Physical and Health Education (PHE) curriculum in Nigeria for primary schools shows various subjects like fundamental movements, basic movements, athletics, games and sports, health education, pathogens, diseases and prevention, drug eradication and responsible parenthood while in the Junior Secondary School (JSS) has sub-topics like basic human movement, sports and games, health education, moving our body parts, athletics and contact and non-contact games.
Although there are subjects where swimming can easily be incorporated, it is still not being taught in public schools. The purpose of the swimming lesson is to equip the children with skills of surviving in water and teach the younger ones the dangers of water, either still or moving.
“This story was made possible with support from the ICFJ-WHO Safety 2018 Reporting Fellowship Program and Bloomberg Philanthropies”