In 2016, the most recent year for World Health Organization’s reported global data, an estimated 320,000 people died from drowning, making it a major public health problem worldwide and ranking drownings as the 3rd leading cause of worldwide unintentional death, after falls and motor vehicle collisions. Other sources provide slightly higher numbers at 324,000 as of 2016. Actually, global estimates may be significantly underestimated.

Drilling into the statistics in detail, shows that over half of the world’s drowning occurs in the Western Pacific Region along the coast of Africa and the South East Asia Region. Drowning death rates are 15-20 times higher in the African Region compared to those seen in Germany or the United Kingdom, respectively.

There is a wide range of uncertainty however around the estimate of global drowning deaths because official data categorization methods exclude intentional drowning deaths for suicide or homicides and drowning deaths caused by flood disasters and water transport incidents.

Using a standardized metric of number of drowning deaths per 100,000 to rank individual countries showed that Guyana ranked first with 15.54 drownings per 100,00, second was Equatorial Guinea at 14.35 followed by Haiti at 13.83.

Drowning is defined as respiratory impairment as a result of being in or under a liquid. Drowning typically occurs silently, with only a few people able to wave their hands or call for help.

More Info: www.who.int