United States: Drowning rates have been falling in the US for decades, but there is a recent increase being reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As the upcoming Memorial Day long weekend sees the American population head for the pools and beaches, the new study suggests that many swimmers lack the most important water safety skills that could be lifesaving.
More about the finding
On average, 15 percent, which amounts to 40 million Americans, have no clue as to how to swim. According to the CDC, more than half the people in this country have never attended formal swimming lessons, as they indicated in their latest national survey, CNN Health reported.
The recently obtained data on swimming skills in the adult American population was released on Tuesday as vital facts by the CDC in a Vital Signs report.
It occurs in place of a coincidental increase in drowning-related deaths in the country after Covid-19. Between the year 2011 and the year 2020, the rise in the number who died revolved around, on average, 4,000 annually. Beyond that, the data is consistent and largely unchanged.
Dr. Debra Houry, chief medical officer for the CDC, said, “When I just look at the overall numbers, with over 4,000 people dying – that’s over 12 people a day – that’s really one person every two hours. And those are lives, not numbers,” as CNN health reported.
Discriminatory rise in drowning cases
There had been a more striking pattern of drownings for sure for some age and racial groups.
Drowning is a major case that steals children’s young lives at preschool ages. They found that cases of drowning in this age group almost tripled, or 30 percent, in the years 2021 and 2022.
Nevertheless, new cases of drowning deaths in children under four climbed in 2020 among them, but the proportion of children in 2020 was not considerable at all statistically.
Black people didn’t simply experience drowning rates rise in a prolonged manner similar to the general population, but they were more than 28 percent higher than the 2019 drowning rates.
However, notwithstanding their less time being spent in swimming pools and other places than Hispanics and Whites, Black Americans reported exercising in or near the water less frequently. An author suggested that the drowning rates were calculated on exposure to lifestyle instead of on population numbers, which may be a factor that even increased the disparities towards Black people.
Furthermore, the CDC swim skills survey showed three times more Black adults saying that they can’t swim compared with adults from the community at large, and this is a result of the legacy of segregation and discrimination in the fact that in as much as this is a problem in the past, it is one of those things that although occurred in the past, people can’t seem to shake off, even to the present.