DM Monitoring
NEW YORK: The World Health Organization (WHO), a Geneva-based UN agency, has said that 20,000 drowning deaths every year in the Euro-pean region are “entirely preventable”.
Most recently, the catastrophic loss of hundreds of lives, including Pakistanis, in the capsizing of a fishing vessel off the Greek coast has brought this into sharp focus, it was pointed out.
“In that one single catastrophe, more than 600 people huddled in desperation and drowned together; most bodies will never be recovered,” Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO’s regional European director, said in a statement issued in Copenhagen on Monday.
“Most of us rarely, if ever, think about drowning as a public health hazard with significant impact,” he said. According to the WHO, the majority of victims tragically drown alone in varied circumstances, from unsupervised pools to deadly rip currents.
Europe is home to the world’s heaviest alcohol drinkers per capita, and this also adds to the crisis. “Alcohol is causally associated with 26 percent of all drowning deaths in the European region,” Kluge said.
The migration crisis further aggravates the issue. “According to the International Organization for Migration, about 34,000 people have drowned in the course of migration since 2014,” Kluge said, underscoring the urgency to act.
“This represents 60 percent of all migration-associated deaths recorded, and of these, almost four out of five –have occurred in the Mediterranean and the English Channel, both within the WHO European Region,” the director said.
Globally, at least 236,000 people lose their lives from drowning each year, according to the WHO. “This, however, accounts only for unintentional drownings. The true toll, excluding deaths from other related causes, is underestimated by 30 to 50 per-cent,” Kluge said.
As the World Drowning Prevention Day on July 25 approaches, Kluge called for urgent action to address the problem. “We should ensure that our collective focus on drowning will no longer be based on the latest mass casualty disaster but on how the loss of each and every life to drowning could have been prevented in the first place,” he said.
Greece is one of the main routes into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Last month the Greek government came under international criticism over video footage reportedly showing the forceful expulsion of migrants who were set adrift at sea.
More than 70,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe’s front-line countries this year, with the majority landing in Italy, according to UN data.
