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 (CPH) 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 CPH recognise the severity of the drowning epidemic in Thailand and have developed the SwimSafe Thailand program. The program trains local swimming and water safety instructors to 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 be moved from school to school and 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.
Expanding on existing SwimSafe programs in Bangladesh and Vietnam, the SwimSafe 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 swimming, 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 CPH 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. Seven swimming and water safety instructors and 10 instructors’ assistants have been trained and will deliver the program to 115 children at the school. Classes commenced in November 2009 and over the next year, SwimSafe Thailand will expand its presence in the province, teaching survival swimming skills to another 220 children from the Anuban Chiang Sean School, Meakum School and Sanmaket School in Chiang Rai.
The program is also being piloted at the Mahapapkrajardthong Ooppratham School in the urban Samut Prakan province of Bangkok. Five teachers were trained as survival swimming instructors in September 2009, with an additional 17 students from Grades 9 and 10 trained as instructors’ assistants. The first students commenced survival swimming classes in November 2009. The official launch of SwimSafe in Bangkok was also celebrated in November.
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 donations from the Royal Life Saving Society – Australia.
With the successful pilot of the program in Chiang Rai and Samut Prakan, in 2010 SwimSafe will look to expand its operations in Thailand so that more Thai children have the opportunity to learn the swimming and survival skills that prevent drowning and save lives.
