Opinion: Turning the UN's pledge on drowning prevention into action

Water is essential for — and gives us — life. But it can also take it away.

Drowning is a significant cause of global mortality. In 2019, the World Health Organization estimated that 236,000 people drown annually. That’s equivalent to almost 650 deaths from drowning every day and 27 deaths every hour.

It is an issue that transcends borders and boundaries, affecting every country of the world.

However, the impacts of drowning are felt unequally. More than 90% of drowning deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, with some of the highest rates recorded in WHO’s Western Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Africa regions. Children and young people represent over half of lives lost.

From infants and toddlers falling into ponds, streams, and pools just meters from their homes to fathers failing to return from fishing trips and families swept away by floodwaters, drowning is a problem that affects us all — and the greatest tragedy is that drowning is preventable.

Despite the scale of this global burden — with over 2.5 million lives claimed in the past decade — drowning prevention has remained unrecognized and under-resourced, relative to its impact and preventability. Drowning is often considered an accident or fate. Indeed, drowning and its prevention have been almost entirely absent from the first 75 years of United Nations discourse and activity. But this oversight is being corrected.

In April, we celebrated the historic adoption of the first U.N. resolution on global drowning prevention. The resolution establishes drowning as an issue of international importance, recognized by all 193 member states.

It sets out the actions that every nation should take to prevent drowning, and it invites WHO to assist countries and support the coordination of drowning-prevention action across the U.N. system, including with key agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, and UNICEF.

We can prevent drowning with tested and scalable solutions. The U.N. resolution recommends that countries implement a range of tested, voluntary actions, as appropriate for national circumstances.

This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring that young children are supervised around water; barriers such as playpens, doors, and covers are used to keep toddlers safe from open water danger in the home; and everyone — especially children and adolescents — knows how to be safe in and around water, such as by learning swimming skills that may save their life, and how to perform basic first aid in an emergency.

The resolution also calls on governments to develop national drowning-prevention plans and policies and to enact and enforce water safety laws in the areas of health, education, transportation, and disaster risk reduction.

The link between drowning prevention and development

Action on drowning presents us with an opportunity to advance progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, drowning prevention can catalyze progress in ending preventable mortality in children under 5, particularly in countries where drowning is a leading cause of child death.

Making progress on drowning prevention also has the potential to protect hard-won gains and investment in childhood immunization, nutrition, and education, which are, sadly, lost to the water with every child that drowns.

Investment in drowning prevention is also relevant to delivering progress on other global agreements, including the Paris climate agreement, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and New Urban Agenda.

Many U.N. member states are with us on the front line in the fight against drowning. And while the challenge is significant, they are showing that with political will, cross-government action, and multisector collaboration, action and positive change is possible.

Evidence and stories of success are growing, as identified in WHO’s recently published drowning-prevention status reports for the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia regions. But much more is needed — and at pace.

Building on the momentum of the resolution

An important component of the resolution adopted in April is the designation of July 25 as World Drowning Prevention Day, to be observed by the U.N. every year. This day serves two purposes: It provides an opportunity to acknowledge and commemorate the thousands of lives lost to the water every year and to celebrate lifesaving actions that we can all take to prevent drowning, wherever we are.

Marking this very first World Drowning Prevention Day offers us a chance to bring together governments, U.N. agencies, civil society, drowning-prevention practitioners and communities to raise awareness of the challenge, recognize that drowning is preventable, and take action.

Securing this resolution was a truly collaborative effort, championed by a coalition of member states in New York known as the Group of Friends on Drowning Prevention, which Bangladesh and Ireland are proud to be part of. We have benefited from the commitment and support of colleagues from around the world, including WHO, UNICEF, and the drowning-prevention sector.

We thank everyone who has contributed to this worthwhile and vital journey to date. But there is more to do. Implementing evidence-based interventions in our communities, countries, and regions will save lives.

We look forward to doing that work collectively and collaboratively. We are ready to act. By working together, across regions and risk profiles, progress on drowning prevention is possible.

Additional contributors to this article are: Dr. Etienne Krug, director of the Department of Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization in Geneva; Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, director of health programs at UNICEF in New York; and Mark Dowie, chief executive at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

We invite you to join us this weekend to recognize this important moment with the first World Drowning Prevention Day. Let’s all be lifesavers.