On March 10, housewife Runa was busy with her household chores and her two-year-old daughter Mehzabin was playing with toys in the bedroom. The bathroom door was open.
After finishing her cooking for the day, Runa went to their bedroom but could not see her daughter. She searched the entire house but little Mehzabin was nowhere to be found.
It did not occur to her that Mehzabin might have gone into the bathroom. But finally, when she looked, Runa was horrified to find her daughter in a bucket of water with her head deep in it.
Runa took Mehzabin to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital immediately but the doctors said she was already dead.
This is just one of many such incidents of children drowning, which emerged as the leading cause of deaths among children between the age of one and four.
In fact, there is one case of drowning every half an hour in Bangladesh. According to Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey (BHIS), drowning is the leading cause of the 30,000 injury-related deaths in the country every year, as many as 17,000 to be specific.
Research organisations have found that most drownings occur in ponds or ditches. Most of these children drown during the monsoon – April to September – because at this season even the driest of places remain under water.
A recent Health and Demographic Surveillance System mapping exercise of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDRB) found that there were more than 6,500 ponds and 4,000 ditches in just one upazila, Motlob, under the Chandpur district. The exercise covered 225,000 people from 143 villages.
Studies have also shown that most cases of drowning occur between 9am and noon when mothers remain busy with household chores and fathers at work.
Although Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in reducing child mortality over the last two decades, injuries, especially drowning, have emerged as a great threat to children. Bangladesh is geographically dominated by water bodies belonging to the Ganges system and innumerable natural and man-made ponds.
The annual monsoon floods and frequent cyclones in the world’s highest density of rivers – 7% of Bangladesh is covered with water and nearly two-thirds are frequently flooded – also contribute to creating an environment conducive for child injuries.
The number of children drowning has remained stable since the 1980s, but drowning as a proportion of all deaths in children between one and four years of age has increased from 9% in 1983 to 59% in 2003.
According to a research by the International Drowning Research Centre Bangladesh, most cases of drowning take place in ponds that are close to houses.
The study found that the rate of child mortality from drowning is higher among the rural population, most likely because of the higher number of water bodies in such areas.
Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey (BHIS) data also shows that more than three-fourths of the drownings take place within 20 metres of the home and almost half (46%) the victims are under four and too young to be able to swim.
Tested and effective interventions to prevent drowning are not yet available and understanding of the behavioral factors that contribute to drowning is limited.
The studies said possible interventions including playpens and crèches could be evaluated now. Still, it is likely to be a few more years before effective interventions can be scaled up.
