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| The blue lights seem to work: millions of tourists and not a single drowning |
The UN declared 25 World Drowning Prevention Day last year, but not content with such Rotarian measures as installing fencing and teaching swimming, rescue and resuscitation,WHO, has called for a social media campaign recalling Trick Or Treat For UNICEF-
.“Going Blue for World Drowning Prevention Day”.
The idea is simple. Local organizations work with relevant authorities to have one or several notable landmarks illuminated in blue light during the evening of 25 July.
Drowning is a leading causes of youthful death, but although oceans cover most of the Earth, less than 10% of the fatalities involve salt water.
Over 90% of drownings occur in rivers, lakes, wells and domestic settings like rain barrels and bathtubs, with children and adolescents in poor and rural areas disproportionately affected.
Few cliche's have longer legs than "Teach A Man To Fish…" but " Teach a child to swim …" has little traction. Covering the seismic Tsunami that drowned hundreds of thousands in 2004, I was dismayed to learn that three times more girls and women perished near its Indonesian epicenter than men and boys. While fathers along that heavily populated and much fished coast had taught their sons to swim since time immemorial, Malay mothers still admonished daughters to remain modestly clothed when they ventured to the shore. It doesn't take a body surfer to ride out water flooding inland, but a tsunami is a terrible place to learn how to tread water in a burqa.
