Saturday, December 29, 2012

OVER 180,000 CHIDREN DROWN EACH YEAR


Every 45 seconds a child in Asia drowns. It is the second leading cause of death for hundreds of thousands of Asian children regardless of water conditions.
When we hear of water killing children in under developed Asian nations we think of water borne diseases like diphtheria and cholera. We would be wrong, drowning is one of the leading cause of death in Asian nations and it's not just when the floods come. In Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and two provinces in China 25 percent of the deaths of children between the ages of 1-17 is from drowning. One half of these drownings are children under the age of four. UNICEF is calling for programs in these areas to educate about drowning prevention. "For too long drowning has been a hidden killer," said the Director of UNICEF's Office of Research, Gordon Alexander in a report from Women of China. "Over the past three decades countries have made strong, continuous progress on infectious disease reduction," he added. "However, no impact has been made on drowning deaths. As a result, drowning is emerging as a leading cause of death for children after infancy in the countries surveyed for this report. And yet drowning is off the political radar."

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/339391#ixzz2GSzYXElK

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