RoSPA’s Leisure Safety Manager, Carlene McAvoy, explains the key role that RoSPA and the National Water Safety Forum are playing in global efforts to prevent drowning.

Drowning is a preventable tragedy that results in the loss of almost 236,000 lives each year worldwide.  In the past decade, there have been over 2.5 million deaths due to drowning. 

The UK is not immune to these tragedies; around 600 people every year lose their life in the water. The most recent figures from 2022 show the UK had 597 overall water-related fatalities. This can be broken down by country: England (436); Scotland (96); Wales (48); Northern Ireland (17).

In May this year, the World Health Assembly adopted its first-ever resolution on drowning prevention. This resolution calls on governments and their partners, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), to accelerate action on drowning prevention with immediate effect. As part of this, it asked member states to assess their national drowning situation, develop and implement related programming, and ensure policy planning across a wide range of sectors to reduce drowning risk.

Coordinating the response

As part of my role as the Secretariat of the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF), which is hosted by RoSPA, I was designated as the National Data Focal Person to collate the response for the UK. This meant the responsibility for gathering, collating, and issuing a coordinated UK response to the resolution.  

Our response included seven key respondents, of which David Walker, Head of Road and Leisure at RoSPA, was a contributor. The majority of the devolved nation governments also responded, resulting in a coordinated and comprehensive response from the whole of the UK, taking into consideration differences in approach, for example from Water Safety Scotland and Water Safety Wales and their respective drowning prevention strategies. 

Using data to prevent deaths

The global status report for drowning prevention will be the first of its kind to measure the magnitude of drowning specific to each country, as well as to assess the implementation of evidence-based interventions to prevent and respond to drowning at the global level. 

The report further responds to the need for a detailed understanding of the burden and context of drowning in order to develop and implement effective, localized drowning prevention solutions and to successfully advocate for measures to mitigate the impact of this preventable public health issue.   
 

RoSPA is proud to be contributing to the development of this report, which the WHO anticipates will: 

1. Improve knowledge at national, regional and global level on the burden, context and impact of drowning 

2. Increase awareness and knowledge-sharing on effective evidence-based approaches to drowning prevention

3. Improve implementation, monitoring and impact evaluation of drowning prevention interventions 

4. Strengthen national, regional and global coordination for drowning prevention 

5. Support national drowning prevention strategy development that is evidence-informed and responds to national priorities.

Carlene McAvoy is Leisure Safety Manager at RoSPA and the founder of Water Safety Scotland