Merit Maker: An Easily Adaptable Drowning Prevention Strategy
In the following story we take you to Thailand. The south-east Asian country is known for its tropical beaches and world famous islands like Phuket; it’s elaborate Buddah Temples and friendly people with the world famous Thai smile. But Thailand is also known as one of the countries the highest drowning rate especially for children under fifteen. Now why are we telling you about drowning in Thailand? Well, like Belize, access to water in Thailand is easy and that puts persons at risk, especially those who don’t know how to swim. And as we reported on Wednesday, for this year as many as fifteen persons have died as a result of drowning. And this number may not seem comparable to homicides or R.T.A.s, but it is of big concern to the World Health Organisation because every hour of every day more than forty people lose their lives to drowning – making that more than three hundred and sixty thousand deaths per year from something that is preventable. So those under five years old in low and middle income countries are at the greatest risk. Here in Belize, four toddlers have perished by drowning in wells, tanks and ponds for this year. And so, last month when the World Health Organisation held a World Safety Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Reporter Andrea Polanco and thirteen other journalists from around the world were selected by the International Center for Journalists to attend the event. Safety 2018 as it’s dubbed, is a forum where injury prevention and safety promotion was discussed among the world’ leading researchers, practitioners and policy makers. They shared solutions and best practices to address injury and violence that are a major public health burden across the world. As a part of their trip, Andrea and three of her colleagues were invited by the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia to do a field trip in the southern province of Thailand called Surat Thani. In the south, they have implemented a drowning prevention strategy called Merit Maker. They use simple and easy strategies to educate families on water safety so as to prevent drowning. Andrea shares more:
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Toddlers in Surat Thani spend their days in play pens like this one. It is a simple, yet effective way that parents use to protect their infants from drowning. But the play pens are just one way that parents and the wider community use to keep small children safe. That is because here in the southern province in Thailand, several communities are along rivers and houses are built over water. And evento get to school children must travel by boat, so they are exposed to open water sources from an early age. And because of that, drowning the number one cause of fatality among children under fifteen years of age. And government and community had to do something about it and it started with awareness that the unintentional deaths were a public health hazard that were preventable.
Pisut Chunchongkolkul
Dr. Pisut Chunchongkolkul, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand
“It starts from the awareness. In the Ministry of Public Health, the Department of Disease Control try to educate them so that they know about drowning and when people are aware, they come together to help each other.”
Through a programme called Merit Maker, children as young as two-years-old are taught about water safety because some ten years ago, more than a thousand infants were dying by drowning across Thailand. Since the program was implemented that number has dropped by half. And in Surat Thani, there were no drowning fatalities among children in the past two years.
Dr. Pisut Chunchongkolkul
“If you look nationwide, we have more than one thousand deaths of kids each year from drowning. And after the merit maker and other efforts before merit maker, we reduced this by fifty percent. Now, we only have six hundred to seven hundred drowning in children under fifteen years in Thailand. So, it is a success here.”
But even before babies are born – mothers are taught water safety even at health clinics. And once babies are born, Merit Maker is implemented through child development centers – where parents and babies are exposed to drowning prevention through fun, interactive activities.
Dr. Pisut Chunchongkolkul
“First, when a woman who is pregnant come to the clinic, we have a pink book that is a manual on how to deal with your kids when in the womb. And after you give birth, inside the book has details of all the things you need to know. For example, vaccines, how to improve development and drowning prevention. Two pages in that book are specifically for drowning prevention and also when you go to the hospital, we have a session to help educate mother and child about drowning prevention. We have video on drowning prevention for mothers who are waiting for vaccines to watch We have sessions and toys for kids to play and learn about drowning facility. So this is in the health care facility.”
In schools, as early as Kindergarten children learn about the dos and dontsof water safety. They do this through Merit Maker lessons at school with interactive games and displays. And when children are older in primary school – they get swimming lessons in their communities where they are taught to float for up to four hours and how to do a rescue. But they do all these things at low cost – using materials such as plastic bottles, dried coconuts, bamboo – making a program like this easily replicated in low and middle income countries like Belize.
Dr. Pisut Chunchongkolkul
“We use less money to do it. We use everything in the environment here in Surat Thani. As you can see, we have the palms and use it as floating equipment. We have the bamboo that we can use to make the playpen. Everything around us can be used to prevent drowning. So, it is really cheap to do merit maker in Thailand.”
Andrea Polanco
“And so you think it would be fairly easy for another country to do a model just like this?”
Dr. Pisut Chunchongkolkul
“Of course. If you can open your mind, open your eyes, you can see everything around you in the environment that you can make floaters to prevent drowning. Everything you can use to make playpen, you just need the awareness and knowledge and use yourself power to educate others about drowning. And that will be successful. I think every country can do that.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
This story was made possible with support from the ICFJ-WHO Safety 2018 Reporting Fellowship Program and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
