Floating aids come in all shapes and sizes - Grade 4 at Samut Prakan, Bangkok
More than 2,600 children die from drowning in Thailand every year, claiming the lives of about seven Thai children each day. Through the SwimSafe Thailand program The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), in partnership with the College of Public Health Sciences (CPHS) at Chulalongkorn University, is working to address the tragic and preventable loss of so many young lives.
While Thai children live and play around the water as part of their daily routines, only one third of Thai children ever learn to swim. The Thai National Injury Survey (TNIS) conducted between 2003 and 2004 showed that more children over the age of one die from drowning than from any other single cause of death.
TASC and CPHS have developed the SwimSafe Thailand program in recognition of the severity of the drowning problem. The program trains local teachers to be swimming and water safety instructors who then teach survival swimming to school children aged 6-12 years.
Using portable pools set up on school grounds, SwimSafe Thailand aims to demonstrate that teaching children survival swimming skills is an inexpensive and effective drowning prevention activity in both urban and rural Thailand. The 12×5 metre pools are easily transportable so that they can reach a maximum number of students.
By integrating water safety and swim teaching programs into the school curricula, SwimSafe Thailand promotes swimming ability as a necessary life skill to students and their communities. These are skills often taken for granted in high income countries.
Expanding
SwimSafe teaches children how to save their peers as well - Grade 5 learning CPR in Chiang Rai province.
on existing SwimSafe programs in Bangladesh and Vietnam, the Swim Safe Thailand curriculum has been developed in association with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia (RLSSA) and the Thai Life Saving Society to specifically fit the geographic and cultural needs of Thailand.
SwimSafe teaches familiarity with the water and children learn a variety of s wimming, survival and rescue skills. Graduates of the program are able to swim continuously for 25 metres and float for 90 seconds.
SwimSafe Thailand builds upon a successful earlier study conducted by the CPHS in Chiang Rai province of northern Thailand, where children were taught survival swimming skills in a natural water reserve in 20 hours of lessons.
SwimSafe Thailand began in June 2009 at the Pasak Noi School in rural Chiang Rai. Since that time, ten swimming and water safety instructors have been trained. Classes commenced in November 2009 and in 2010, children from four other schools in the community are accessing survival swimming classes as part of the SwimSafe program; Anuban Chiang Sean School, Maekum School and Sanmaket School.
SwimSafe Thailand is funded by the Australia-Thailand Institute (ATI) and is also supported with funds raised generously by the Bangkok Patana School – Tigersharks in their annual swim-a-thon and contributions from the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia and The Alliance for Safe Children.
With the successful pilot of the program in Chiang Rai and Samut Prakan, in 2010 SwimSafe will continue to ensure that more and more Thai children are given the opportunity to learn the swimming and survival skills that prevent drowning and save lives.
World Conference on Drowning Prevention – Danang, Vietnam May 2011
