The Association for the Promotion of Child Safety (APSI) and the National Republican Guard (GNR) launch today a drowning prevention campaign, which aims to raise awareness of this problem and provide information to protect children.
The campaign “Death by drowning is silent and fast” will run until the end of September.
The latest available data, for 2021, indicates that there were a total of 12 child and youth deaths. In 2020 there had been 14 deaths.
According to APSI, in Portugal, drowning is still the second leading cause of accidental death in children and youth.
Although in the last 20 years the cases of drowning of children and young people have been decreasing, “it is important to look beyond the numbers”, remember the organizations, stressing: “Each one of these deaths is a family that was forever incomplete or a child who was lost or left with severe neurological sequelae and poor quality of life”.
In this joint campaign, for the second consecutive year, APSI and GNR aim to raise awareness among families about the importance of safety precautions to be observed near water, particularly at beaches, rivers, dams, pools or tanks.
“It is crucial that unattended swimming pools, tanks and their accesses are fenced to delay or prevent the child’s contact with water without adult supervision,” they warn.
According to the WHO, this is the most effective measure to prevent young children from drowning.
The use of flotation equipment – flotation aids for children who cannot yet swim well and life jackets in nautical activities – as well as the learning, by children and adults, of aquatic skills, namely, basic life support, “is also fundamental”, APSI and GNR recall, insisting that “none of these measures replace permanent adult supervision”.
