Drowning
Drowning is the process of experiencing respiratory impairment from submersion/immersion in liquid. Drowning outcomes are classified as death, morbidity and no morbidity. Agreed terminology is essential to describe the problem and to allow effective comparisons of drowning trends. Thus, this definition of drowning adopted by the 2002 World Congress on Drowning should be widely used.
In 2002 an estimated 376,000 people drowned, making it the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death globally after road traffic injuries and falls, bearing in mind that these Global Burden of Disease figures are an under-estimate of all drowning deaths, since they exclude drowning due to floods (cataclysms), boating and water transport. The vast majority (approximately 97%) of all drowning deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries. The Western Pacific and South East Asia regions account for 60% of the mortality and DALYs. Males in Africa and in the Western Pacific have the highest drowning-related mortality rates worldwide. However, among the various age groups, children under 5 years of age have the highest drowning mortality rates worldwide. Over half of the global mortality and 60% of the total number of DALYs lost due to drowning occurs among children aged between 0 and 14 years.