NGOs join hands to help control high number of child drownings in the Sundarbans

Marking World Drowning Prevention Day, two pond-based swimming pools were opened in the Sundarbans in West Bengal to teach young children swimming and save them from adverse drowning situations. This initiative is expected to reduce the number of child drowning cases in the area and it has been designed as a preventive measure whereby young children will be taught swimming under controlled environment in local ponds.

This is a pilot project carried out by non-governmental organisation Child in Need Institute (CINI), in partnership with global agencies Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and The George Institute (TGI).

The managers of the programme said this ground-level intervention can reduce drowning cases in large numbers in the Sundarbans area. They hope to take this pilot project a step further and have these pond-based swimming pools in multiple locations in this delta region to help save more young lives.

Also Read: Death by water: awareness can prevent drowning casualties 

Data shows that three children deaths are recorded in the Sundarbans due to drowning. This is the world’s biggest delta and riverine region in which the number of water bodies are endless, thereby increasing the risk of drownings exponentially. As a result, child drownings in the Sundarbans are one of the highest in the world.

“Drowning is a preventable crisis, not an inevitability. Solutions such as Kavach and pond-based swimming pools prove that affordable, scalable safety measures exist. Let’s turn World Drowning Prevention Day initiatives into a global movement,” said Sujoy Roy, CINI’s national advocacy officer.

These pools and swimming training are a part of the “Kavach initiative” where these organisations have two pilot centres to take care of young children and keep them under adult supervision. Mr. Roy said, “In the Sundarbans, a region with abundant water bodies, drowning is a serious public health concern, especially among children. It takes only 10 seconds for someone to drown, and unscientific prevention or cure methods wastes precious time in saving lives.”

The Kavach initiative addresses this specific crisis as there are trained community mothers or ‘Kavach Maa’ at these centres who take care of the children while their mothers do their daily chores at home.

Lalita Kayal, a ‘Kavach Maa’ working at Moupit Baikunthapur Kavach centre in Kultali said: “Most of the men are migrant labourers here. The woman is mostly alone with the child doing all household chores. It is easy for children to slip their mother’s attention and fall into the nearby waterbodies. How much can she do alone? Here, each house has ponds on both sides, the risks are high.” She said that this is where the community mothers like herself have come to the fore by looking after the children, teaching and feeding them while the mothers get their other work done.

These women are also formally trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and post-drowning care of children to rescue children in case someone falls in the water.

Danger in vicinity

Research has also pointed out that 90% of children drown within 50 metres of their house in the region. This situation becomes clear when one sees the structure of the houses in the Sundarbans. Most houses have water bodies on the side, the kitchen doors generally open onto one of the ponds to give easy access to the family to wash their dishes and get water for the kitchen. Mothers generally keep their young children in the kitchen while they are cooking. This is when small children who can crawl or walk directly slip from the kitchen doors into the adjacent ponds and die.

Initiators of the pond-based swimming pools said that once the young children learn swimming, they will not be prone to drowning so easily and can call for help to stay afloat in the meantime.

Dr. Tej Prakash Sinha, Additional Professor at Emergency Medicine Department, JPNACT, AIIMS Delhi, and Co-Director WHO Collaborating Centre for Emergency and Trauma Care, Delhi, said: “Drowning is an important public health issue. Somehow there was not much advocacy because according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) annual drowning deaths are only around 38,000. But death among young age groups is huge. We need to address this. A framework to address this issue was launched last year by the Ministry.”

To address this problem of drowning, then Union Ministers of State for Health and Family Welfare S.P. Singh Baghel and Bharti Pravin Pawar in 2023 unveiled the ‘Strategic Framework for Drowning Prevention’ in India.

Dr. Pawar had then stated: “Drowning prevention in India requires a comprehensive and strategic approach that encompasses awareness, education, data-driven interventions, infrastructure development, collaboration, and strengthened emergency response.”