Abstract
Background: Drowning is a serious and mostly preventable injury-related cause of death. Low-and-middle income countries represent over 90% of total drowning deaths worldwide. There is lack of epidemiological studies of drowning in Nepal. The aim of this paper is to describe the status of drowning in Nepal. Methods: Cases of drowning, occurring between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2015 were extracted from the Daily Incident Recording System of Nepal Police. Drowning cases were extracted and analysed regardless of their intent. Variables on age, sex of the deceased, types of water bodies, geographical locations, season when drowning occurred and activities of deceased were extracted and descriptive analysis was conducted. Results: A total of 1,507 drowning cases were recorded over a 3 year period. The rate of drowning was 1.9 per 100,000 (2.95 for males and 0.92 for females). Majority of drowning occurred among males (76%) and more than half were (53%) under 20 years of age. Mostly drowning occurred in rivers (natural water bodies). The findings provide strong indication that drowning occurs throughout the year in Nepal. Children were highly vulnerable to drowning. The magnitude of drowning was found to be lower than estimated by global burden of disease (GBD) study. Conclusion: The burden of drowning in Nepal is considerable, but mostly unknown to the public. Despite only having access to a limited data source, this study provides useful evidence that comprehensive research in Nepal is needed urgently.
Highlights
Drowning is gradually being recognized as a leading cause of death in the low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC); yet it remains a neglected problem in many countries in the absence of adequate data (Peden et al, 2008; Rahman et al, 2009)
40% of the world’s total drowning deaths occur in children below 15 years and most of these occurred in low- and middle-income countries; 29% in South-East Asia region alone (IHME, 2016)
Members or community people must report the incidents of drowning to the Daily Incidence Reporting Center of Nepal Police in each village development committee (VDC) level
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. Keywords Drowning, Nepal, Public Health, Natural water bodies, Injury Prevention. The revised version addresses the comments provided by the reviewers. Some of the text has been revised for clarity. We have added the map of Nepal which depicts the landscape (Mountain, Hill, and Terai) of Nepal. As suggested by the reviewer, the objectives of the study were added in the Introduction section. Some of the references were added in the Discussion section to compare the findings with the similar study. Spelling and grammatical errors in the text were edited. We have responded to each of the reviewer’s comments
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