In the past two months, up to 200 children have drowned in Vietnam, causing a big concern among the public.
It is early summer in Vietnam but the weather is very hot, especially in central Vietnam. To relieve from the heat, some people, including children, have bath in rivers, canals, and streams. Many drowning cases have happened.
Most recently, two 12-year-old schoolgirls drowned at 2pm, May 13 in Do Luong district of the central province of Nghe An.
The same day, two brothers, 14 and 12, in Dien Chau district, also in Nghe An province, had drowned.
According to Nghe An authorities, there are 14 students that drowned in the province this summer.
On May 12, up to five children in the southern province of Dong Nai died by drowning, including
three in the same family. 
Drowning – the threat for poor children
Mr. Nguyen Trong An, vice chief of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs’ Children Protection Department, said that drowning is the major reason causing death for people of less than 18 years old.
Since 2005, of more than 7,000 Vietnamese kids who died by accidents annually, over 3,500 had died by drowning.
This year, the number of children who were drowned was very high though the summer has just come. In many cases, several kids died at the same time. Most of the case occurred in the countryside.
In many cases, children died of drowning due to their parents’ carelessness and unsafe living environment.
Notably, most of drowned children could not swim, even though who lived in the Mekong Delta, where the flood season is several months. In this region, only 35-36 percent of kids at the age of 12-15 can swim. In the northern region, the rate is lower, less than 10 percent.
Even children who can swim drowned because of lacking skills against drowning.
“Recently, a little girl named Trang was honored for sacrificing herself to save her friends. This girl could swim but she drowned while rescuing her friends. I think that we should not encourage kids to save others when they do not have skills to rescue drowning victims,” Mr. An said.
Teaching swimming on paper
Relevant agencies have implemented some measures to prevent drowning among kids but the situation has not been improved.
The media has released a lot of warnings against drowning but these messages could not reach highly-risky subjects – poor people. These people are busy with making their livelihood so they could not approach to radio, newspapers or television.
It is effective to give the warning via the network of volunteers, but this force is small. Vietnam has over 11,000 rural communes but there are only 15,000 volunteers in the field of child caring. On average, each commune has one volunteer while the average population of communes is 25,000.
Teaching swimming skills to children via schools and the youth union is considered as a good way.
The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs has joined with the Ministry of Education and Training to design a program to add swimming to compulsory curriculum of general students from 2015.
Swimming teaching has been carried out on a pilot program in ten locations. However, according to Mr. Nguyen Trong Hoan, an official from the Department of Education and Training of Nghe An province, this program is being implemented on paper, because schools do not have swimming pools
(VNN)
