NGOs join hands to help control high number of child drownings in the Sundarbans

Pilot project in Sundarbans introduces pond-based swimming pools to prevent child drownings, supported by global agencies.

Marking World Drowning Prevention Day, two pond-based swimming pools were opened in the Sundarbans in West Bengal to teach young children swimming and save them from adverse drowning situations. This initiative is expected to reduce the number of child drowning cases in the area and it has been designed as a preventive measure whereby young children will be taught swimming under controlled environment in local ponds.

This is a pilot project carried out by non-governmental organisation Child in Need Institute (CINI), in partnership with global agencies Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and The George Institute (TGI).

The managers of the programme said this ground-level intervention can reduce drowning cases in large numbers in the Sundarbans area. They hope to take this pilot project a step further and have these pond-based swimming pools in multiple locations in this delta region to help save more young lives.

Data shows that three children deaths are recorded in the Sundarbans due to drowning. This is the world’s biggest delta and riverine region in which the number of water bodies are endless, thereby increasing the risk of drownings exponentially. As a result, child drownings in the Sundarbans are one of the highest in the world.

“Drowning is a preventable crisis, not an inevitability. Solutions such as Kavach and pond-based swimming pools prove that affordable, scalable safety measures exist. Let’s turn World Drowning Prevention Day initiatives into a global movement,” said Sujoy Roy, CINI’s national advocacy officer.

These pools and swimming training are a part of the “Kavach initiative” where these organisations have two pilot centres to take care of young children and keep them under adult supervision. Mr. Roy said, “In the Sundarbans, a region with abundant water bodies, drowning is a serious public health concern, especially among children. It takes only 10 seconds for someone to drown, and unscientific prevention or cure methods wastes precious time in saving lives.”

The Kavach initiative addresses this specific crisis as there are trained community mothers or ‘Kavach Maa’ at these centres who take care of the children while their mothers do their daily chores at home.