Farhana Nila: Establishing daycare centre in rural area may reduce the child mortality by drowning as most of the victims belong age group below four years due to busiest hours of their mothers in early parts of the day, experts said citing research and incident analysis.
There had been 875 incidents between January 1, 2020 to June 30 this year which resulted fatalities to 1,402 people, including 1,184 children across the country, according to the Society for Media and Suitable Human-communication Techniques (SoMaSHTe).
Talking to News Now Bangla, a rights activist mentioned a recent incident. The incident is excerpted here: Tasin, a 5-years old kid in Majhikandi area of Jhinaidah district.
The accident happened in morning when his mother was busy with household chores. Tasin went to play with his elder brother, Tamil (7). There was a small pond besides their home. Once, Tamil went down to the pond along with friends. Following the elder brother, Tasin went down to pond. And two brothers experienced fatalities from drowning.
Analysing the local incident, the rights group made couple of suggestions including establishing day care centre in rural areas apart from raising awareness at family level.
Private Center for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB) Director Dr Aminur Rahman said that most of the child drowning incidents took place in villages due to poverty, unawareness and lack of institutional initiatives.
“In the village area, most of the water bodies — ponds, ditches, ponds, canals – are near to living areas. The children therefore go into the pond without the eyes of others and get into an accident,” he said.
Citing a research on children drowning, Dr Aminur said the children drowning happened mostly in early part of the day when mothers are busy with household chores.
“In that time, a mother relieves to think that her child is playing with another child. And at this time more accidents happen. The danger quarter is morning to noon for child drowning,”
Dr Aminur further said the child drowning can be reduced to 70 percent through establishing day care centre in rural areas as the system has already made successful run on pilot-basis in couple of villages.
Regarding the day care centre, State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Fazilatunnesa Indira said there have been running some pilot projects in public-private partnerships in some districts.
“The ministry has designed a development project proposal for expansion of the initiatives to ensure child projection across the country. We are waiting for approval of the project from Ecnec in earliest time,” she said.
