World Drowning Prevention Day marked at Lower Manya Krobo
This year’s World Drowning Prevention Day was celebrated at Amedeka near Akuse in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region, with a call on the need to strengthen public awareness of drowning and highlight the vulnerability of children.
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Hosted by the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly, this year’s event was held on the theme: “Anyone can drown, No one should.”
The event was jointly organised by the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Life Partners Platform and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Day
The day is marked to raise awareness of drowning activities and educate the general public on the need to take precautions to avoid drowning in the country’s water bodies, especially in communities with river bodies, ponds and wells.
There were activities including drowning safety messaging, an overview of the celebration, distribution of life jackets and a drowning prevention simulation exercise demonstrated at the Volta River at Amedeka by Nana Baah Biney, the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician of the Lower Manya Krobo Ambulance Service.
The Head of the Radiological Department of NADMO, Dr Mrs Bertha Kusimi, who led the team for the celebration, stated that strengthening public awareness of drowning and highlighting the vulnerability of children, in particular, training people in resuscitation methods, installing barriers/control access to water, teaching water safety and basic swimming skills and wearing of life jackets were some of the global prevention methods that could help reduce, if not eliminate, the incidents of drowning in the country.
She said NADMO, as the lead stakeholder in the celebration, collaborated with its stakeholders on World Drowning Prevention Day to press home the practices which positively impacted the communities by making them resilient to drowning disasters.
The Field Data Supervisor of the KNUST School of Public Health, Cara Aidoo, said the KNUST Public Health partnered with centres of disease control in the United States of America to conduct a survey in Ghana to help understand and prevent drowning in Ghana.
That survey, she said, yielded novel information about drowning in Ghana, including previously unknown information on the burden and circumstances of drowning.
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The Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Chief Executive, Simon Kweku Tetteh, donated 60 life jackets to the NADMO for distribution to people of the Amedeka community who cross the Volta Lake daily to other communities for their economic activities.
The Country Director of Life Partners Platform, Kofi Koranteng Abrokwa, said the statistics of deaths from surveys conducted in Ghana were very huge and pledged his NGO’s continued support in various ways to raise awareness to help curb the menace.
The Country Director of Life Partners Platform, Kofi Koranteng Abrokwa, said the statistics of deaths from surveys conducted in Ghana were very huge and pledged his NGO’s continued support in various ways to raise awareness to help curb the menace.