SwimSafe Preventing child drowning in Asia through teaching survival swimming skills

The 2nd annual Swing to Swim Charity Golf Day will once again be hosted by The Montgomerie Links golf course and proudly supported by Indochina Land and the Vietnam Swans while being endorsed by Royal Life Saving Society – Australia (RLSSA), which have contributed significantly to swimming programs in the country.

Swing to Swim will be held on Saturday 17th March 2012 in a bid to raise VND 500,000,000 for local swimming programs, Swim Vietnam Hoi An and Swim Safe Danang. In a country where more children die from drowning than road accidents, these swimming programs are essential for raising awareness and reducing the number of drowning deaths in Vietnam and the immediate region.

The Montgomerie Links and Vietnam’s very own Australian Rules Football Club, the Vietnam Swans will continue their cooperative building on the success of 2011 when VND 500,000,000 was raised in the charity golf event’s inaugural year.

“The Montgomerie Links is proud to host Swing to Swim due to the significance of drowning in our region. With miles of coastline and rivers that surround Danang and Quang Nam provinces, this charity golf event takes enormous steps to provide funding to these worthy swimming programs to save the lives of local citizens while further demonstrating Indochina Land’s commitment to charitable causes” said Jon Tomlinson General Director of The Montgomerie Links and Vice Director of Indochina Land’s Hospitality Division.

“Along Vietnam’s coastline and internal waterways, we know how water can take someone’s life in a breath. We also know that water sustains life” said the Vietnam Swans’ President, Phil Johns. “Australians are renowned for their swimming ability and therefore, as Vietnam’s Australian Rules Football Club, we are very proud to support these swimming initiatives. Vietnamese children should not only survive but thrive in the waterways of Vietnam. Swim Vietnam and Swim Safe are unlocking an exciting world of safe swimming in this wonderful country.”

The golf event is designed to be fun and light hearted with a team “scramble” format played over 18 holes at the stunning Montgomerie Links Golf Course voted the best in Vietnam for the past two years. In addition to the round of golf, as part of the package, there is lunch and gala dinner comprising an auction hosted by the Vietnam Swans.

To help raise much needed funds for survival swimming programs in Vietnam and for more information on the event please visit www.vietnamswans.com

2011 was another successful year for the SwimSafe Danang program. In total, over 5,800 children were taught during the year taking the total number of children reached by the program to well over 15,000.

The program has expanded its period of operation and now includes a before and after school program that runs from March to May and an after school program that runs from November to February. The bulk of the programs activities occur between April and October.

The program has also expanded the number of training sites it can offer in 2011. The program is now delivered in 14 venues, 11 portable pools located in schools, 1 permanent pool at the Danang Rehabilitation Hospital and 2 open water venues that are run in partnership with the Danang Lifeguard Service.

SwimSafe Danang was established in 2009 as a component of the Safe Danang project. SwimSafe Danang is a large scale pilot program that uses survival swimming lessons as a drowning prevention strategy in Danang, Vietnam.

Survival swimming is a much needed skill in Vietnam. Recently published data shows that drowning is the leading cause of death after infancy in Asia and may exceed 250,000 deaths every year. While drowning is known to affect individuals, families, communities and nations in ways similar to other preventable diseases, it has not yet captured the full attention of international, regional or national development agencies.

SwimSafe Danang is set to commence its fourth year in 2012 and again aims to teach over 5,000 children the lifesaving skills of survival swimming and water safety. Continued thanks go to the key partners of the SwimSafe Danang program including The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), the People’s Committee of Danang and the Department of Education and Training. Funding is provided by AusAID, with program support from Royal Life Saving Society – Australia.

The Bangkok Patana School TigerSharks swimteam are hosting the 4^th annual SwimSafe Thailand Swimathon Fundraiser on Saturday 11 June from 6pm – midnight. This is a great event which has made an enormous contribution over the last several years to SwimSafe – a program which aims to prevent child drowning by providing communities with the training and resources to teach children survival swimming skills. You can help prevent child drowning in Thailand by sponsoring a team as we swim through the night!

Why donate to SwimSafe Thailand?

Sadly more than 2,600 children die each year from drowning in Thailand, making it the leading cause of death for children over the age of one. That figure grows to an estimated 300,000 children across Asia each year. But research has shown that swimming skills are associated with protection from drowning in Thailand and elsewhere. New results from SwimSafe Bangladesh now show a five-fold drowning mortality reduction in children who have graduated from the program.

SwimSafe Thailand uses unique, low technology portable swimming pools to bring swim classes to children anywhere. Your contribution will go directly to project activities (training, swim teaching, equipment) at primary schools in three provinces across Thailand where hundreds of children are learning the survival swimming and rescue skills which will help safeguard themselves and their peers in the water – skills often taken for granted in high income countries.

With more than 140,000 children trained across the region to date, SwimSafe programs in Thailand, Vietnam and Bangladesh are leading the way to show that child drowning is indeed preventable. Your contribution will directly impact the numbers of children SwimSafe is able to reach in Thailand in 2011-12.

To help prevent child drowning in Thailand by making a donation to SwimSafe, please visit http://www.everydayhero.com.au/event/SwimSafeThailandSwimathon and click on ‘Donate now’.

Thank you for your support!

Key research released on 11 May 2011 at the International Life Saving Federation’s World Conference on Drowning Prevention could dramatically reduce the child drowning epidemic in Asia if necessary interventions are scaled up.

Approximately 300,000 children drown in Asia every year with the research showing that these numbers could be reduced by as much as 80 per cent.

The specific findings come after four years of collaborative research between Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), the Centre for Injury Prevention Research Bangladesh and UNICEF.

“Drowning disproportionately affects children, low income and less adaptive populations. Research and surveys continually show us that drowning has reached epidemic proportions in many Asian countries and is the leading killer of children post‐infancy in many nations,” said Dr Steve Beerman, President of the International Life Saving Federation (ILS), which acts as the world authority for drowning prevention.

Dr Michael Linnan, Technical Director for TASC: “Drowning kills more children than tuberculosis, more than HIV, more than malaria, and more than tetanus, whooping cough and polio put together,” he said during his presentation, ‘Child Drowning in Asia – From Evidence to Action’ at the World Conference on Drowning Prevention in Danang, Vietnam.

Dr Linnan revealed that drowning deaths climb dramatically from less that 20 per 100,000 for infants to well over 100 deaths per 100,000 for children aged 1–2 across Asia. Drowning still remains significantly high for children into their teenage years.

“If we want to make a difference, we really need to start interventions early in a child’s life,” he said.

Studies show children aged 1–4 are the most vulnerable to drowning, with a lack of adult supervision the main contributing factor. The Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB) along with partner organisations TASC and Royal Life Saving Society – Australia (RLSSA), developed a community creche programme (called Anchal) to provide children with a safe environment during the period of the day when the parents are busiest with household chores.

Research now shows that the Anchal programme had a fourfold reduction in child drowning rates, and a significant reduction in all injuries compared to children who did not attend Anchal.

For older children, the SwimSafe programme has been teaching children aged 5–12 years swimming and water survival skills. The new research now shows a five-fold drowning mortality reduction in children who have graduated from the programme.

The challenge now is scaling up the interventions.

“Scaling up has to be part of the agenda, we can’t stay in pilot programs,” said Gordon Alexander, UNICEF Director of the Office of Research, speaking at the conference. “We need baselines, we need research and we need more money for research,” he said.

Eric Finkelstein from Duke NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore conducted the cost-effectiveness of the study.

“This shows the highest risk-reduction from any study I have seen,” he said.

In addition, the preliminary figures, while still being finalised, indicate that the Anchal intervention can be implemented for as little as $70 per child per year, and the onetime cost of a SwimSafe graduate is roughly $18 per child per year.

Dr Linnan stressed the importance of this data that shows drowning in low and middle income countries can be reduced, and the cost effectiveness is relatively affordable. These results demonstrate an exciting opportunity to roll out the interventions on a regional level.

“By empowering communities with evidence based interventions, many hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved from drowning and other injuries—now and in the future,” Dr Beerman said.

The conference was organised by ILS members Royal Life Saving Society – Australia and The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC) and ran from 10–13 May 2011.

SwimSafe volunteers and TOTs show off new test kits donated by PoolWerx

The SwimSafe Danang program, a survival swimming program for children in central Vietnam, has recently benefited from a donation of water test kits and dive discs from PoolWerx. The resources were presented to instructors at a SwimSafe Training of Trainerrs Workshop that was held on Sunday 17 April 2011. The workshop provided refresher training for the head teachers of the SwimSafe Program in the lead up to the new season.

SwimSafe Danang, which is now in its third year, is taught by local primary school teachers in portable pools in schools. It is also taught at the beach by Danang lifeguards. The program has now taught over 10,000 children the lifesaving skills of survival swimming and CPR. The program was developed by the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia (RLSSA), The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC) and the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research – Bangladesh (CIPRB) in a bid to curb the epidemic of child drowning that claims the lives of 32 children in Vietnam between the ages of 1 and 17 every day.

The head teachers received the chlorine test kits and dive discs to take back to their teaching venues. The donations were much appreciated and will go a long way towards improving water quality and teaching outcomes at 12 SwimSafe venues across Da Nang. Over the next few months the head teachers will be taught and supported in using this new equipment by Sophie Buchhorn and Deborah Quilliam, volunteers from Australia who are in Danang as part of the Australian Governments Volunteers for International Development from Australia (VIDA) program.

As VIDA Deborah says “The children loved the dive discs, donated by PoolWerx! We ran through some progressions with the teachers after we had finished working with the children and they continued to play with the dive discs the whole time.”

Sophie also recognised that the training of the instructors in the use of the test kits, as well as their integration into the program, may prove to be challenging. “All of the instructors are new to running a pool and some are not comfortable with using chlorine. Hopefully when the instructors see how easy it is to monitor the chlorine levels in the water, they will feel more comfortable with maintaining the chemical levels in the pools, which will not only benefit the teachers, but the children as well.”

Training of trainers continues this month in Danang ahead of the summer program set to kick off in May 2011.

As part of the fight against the leading killer of children in Bangladesh, the International Drowning Research Centre – Bangladesh (IDRC-B) will launch a new intervention against drowning – a large portable pool to teach urban children vital water survival skills.

The IDRC-B will launch the pool on Wednesday 20 April 2011 as part of their SwimSafe programme – a unique initiative in Bangladesh that has already taught over 100,000 children in rural Bangladesh vital water survival skills.

The 12 metre by 6.5 metre pool will be trialed as an effective tool in the prevention of child drowning in urban Dhaka. A pool has also recently been established in the Dhaka area of Mirpur. 

Since the SwimSafe programme’s inception in Bangladesh in 2006, over 100,000 children have learnt swimming and water safety skills. Not one graduate of the programme has drowned. The success of the programme in rural Bangladesh is hoped to carry over to children in urban Dhaka.

Dr Aminur Rahman, Director of the IDRC-B, says that while drowning mostly occurs in rural areas, it is not commonly known that a large number of children from urban areas also become victims of drowning.

Dr Aminur said “Unfortunately, the high rate of child mortality due to drowning is not only occurring amongst children who live in rural areas where there is a lot of water. Children who live in urban areas do not have the same opportunities as rural children to familiarize themselves with water and learn how to swim naturally. As a result, it’s quite a common scenario when families visit their villages or holiday by the ocean that children find themselves in trouble in water and do not know how to save themselves or others.”

“The portable pool that we have set up in Agargaon is the first of its kind in Bangladesh. We will be providing hundreds of children with the opportunity to learn water survival skills as part of the SwimSafe curriculum. The pools have already been established in Thailand and Vietnam with great success, and we are positive that we can replicate that here in Bangladesh.” 

Dr Aminur added “Research has shown us that a major factor in preventing child drowning is the ability to swim. That’s why this innovative pool is so important in the reduction of child drowning in this country.”

Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child drowning in the world. Each year, 18,000 children under the age of 18 drown and it is now the leading cause of death of children in the country.

IDRC-B’s partners Royal Life Saving Society Australia, The Alliance for Safe Children and AusAID have provided technical and financial support for the project. The Australian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Dr Justin Lee has shown his support for the initiative and will be attending the official launch.

The portable pool initiative will also be trialed in the rural project area of Raiganj, Siragonj. Two pools will be established in the area to test their feasibility as an alternative to the bamboo structures that SwimSafe lessons are currently taught in.

Despite it being widely recognized as a vital technique in the prevention of drowning in developed countries for over 50 years, Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is now being trialled in rural Bangladesh as an effective measure against drowning. 

The International Drowning Research Centre – Bangladesh, which is part of CIPRB, is for the first time looking at the feasibility, scalability and effectiveness of teaching CPR and First Responder skills to rural people in a low income country context to reduce the number of drowning and other fatal injuries.   

CPR is the technique used once someone’s heart stops to keep blood flowing through the body and brain by doing compressions on the victim’s chest, and keeps oxygen in the blood stream by breathing oxygen into the victim’s mouth. 

IDRC-B says it expects more challenges in researching the effectiveness of CPR than those faced in high income countries as cultural, financial and educational issues are more prevalent. 

Drowning is the leading cause of death in Bangladeshi children under the age of 18. Every year, 18,000 children drown in largely preventable incidents.

Dr Aminur Rahman, who is the Director of the IDRC-B, says that given drowning is such a massive issue in this country, new interventions need to be trialled in Bangladesh to prevent such unnecessary deaths. He says there is also the potential to apply the interventions to other low-middle income countries with similar risk environments. 

A big issue in the Bangladesh context is the lack of emergency services and first responders in the rural areas. If a child or an adult becomes unconscious after falling into water, there is no service to provide them with medical treatment to potentially save their life.

With partners Royal Life Saving Society Australia, TASC and AusAID, IDRC-B will be testing the feasibility of teaching CPR to low literacy and illiterate people and the retention period of these skills, developing a First Response network and also testing the effectiveness of CPR on reducing drowning rates in rural Bangladesh.

As part of the study, 2,400 people across 20 villages in the Raigonj area will be trained in CPR and First Responder skills. This includes 1,800 adolescents and 600 key community members such as school teachers, religious leaders and government officials. The study is an ongoing project with results expected by 2012.

Workshop field visit to SwimSafe venue in Raigonj

With participants from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, the workshop explored strategies to reduce child drowning across the region.

Participants from public health, injury prevention, water safety, government policy and NGO backgrounds discussed a breadth of issues, including drowning as the leading cause of death in children in Bangladesh and the region; a lack of awareness of the extent of the problem; supervision issues for young children; teaching older children water survival skills and the problems facing scaling up current interventions across the country.

A field visit to rural Raigonj to view anchals (crèches) and SwimSafe pond venues, the current interventions implemented by the Center for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh, brought to life the realities of the drowning problem in a country such a Bangladesh. Participants also viewed the recently opened International Drowning Research Centre – Bangladesh model centre, which provides a modern facility for ensuring child safety and enhancing early childhood development activities.

In laying the groundwork for a regional strategy on preventing child drowning, the need for advocacy at a national and regional level, resource mobilization, community involvement and a collaborative approach were just some of the key elements identified as imperative to reducing the epidemic.

The highly successful workshop was organized in conjunction with the International Drowning Research Centre – Bangladesh’s collaborating partners Royal Life Saving Society – Australia, TASC and the Australian Government’s aid agency AusAID. The strategy developed will be presented at the World Conference on Drowning Prevention to be held in Vietnam in May 2011.

Water familiarisation in one of Danang's 10 portable pools

The official SwimSafe 2010 season has come to an end in Danang, with the program reaching more than 4,600 children with survival swimming training this year. Throughout the summer and in an after school program once class resumed in September, children attended a series of 20 SwimSafe lessons which taught them the basics of survival swimming and rescue. Students were trained in portable swimming pools set up on school grounds, a hospital rehabilitation pool or at the beach.

Their instructors were again their teachers or beach lifeguards, many of whom returned from the 2009 SwimSafe season, but also with a number of new recruits. Trainers from Royal Life Saving Society – Australia made two visits to Danang this year, resulting in the certification of nine local instructor trainers who are now qualified to certify new instructors themselves. This is a great achievement and an important step for the Danang community in working towards local management of the program.

SwimSafe continued to work very closely with the Danang Department of Education & Training, but the emphasis in 2010 was on management of classes taking place at individual school venues, with school principals taking a leading role. Support for SwimSafe among the Danang community – schools, teachers, families – is very strong and growing.

SwimSafe Danang will continue to be supported by AusAID in 2011. In May the international drowning prevention community will turn its eyes to Danang as RLSSA and TASC host the World Conference on Drowning Prevention 2011.

Close to 10,000 children have been trained in survival swimming since SwimSafe Danang began in 2009. These children are now familiar with the water and have developed skills to help keep them safe in the water. In a country where more than 11,000 children die each year from drowning, this is a very significant achievement.

The official opening - the IDRC will carry out research to develop effective and sustainable drowning interventions in Asia

The International Drowning Research Centre – Bangladesh (IDRC-B) was officially launched on Wednesday 4 August 2010 in Dhaka with over 200 people attending the launch ceremony.

The centre, based in Dhaka, is the first of its kind anywhere in the world and will carry out research to develop effective and sustainable drowning interventions that are appropriate for Bangladesh and countries with similar social, cultural and risk environments, especially neighbouring countries across Asia.

The IDRC-B is coordinated by the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB) along with its partners the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia (RLSSA), The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC) and supported the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).

The State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Dr Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury was chief guest of the launching ceremony and spoke about how a greater awareness is needed around such tragic deaths amongst children and research focusing on action and results could be the key to reducing the child drowning rate.

Also on hand to launch the centre were special guests MD Ishaque Hosain Talukder MP, Dr Justin Lee – Australian High Commissioner to Bangladesh, Serguei Diordista of WHO, Carel de Rooy of UNICEF, as well as representatives of RLSSA, TASC and CIPRB.