4 children drown in Vietnam's river

Four children from Vietnam's central Quang Ngai province drowned while bathing in a river here, the provincial police said on Saturday.

Two sisters aged 10 and 15, and two twin brothers aged nine from two families in Nghia Hanh district were having a bath in Ve River on Friday afternoon when they slid into a deep hole in the river. By Saturday morning, all the four bodies had been found by local police and residents.

"Drowning is a silent epidemic claiming more than 2,000 children's lives per year in Vietnam," an official from the World Health Organization in Vietnam told Xinhua, adding that the number of children drowning in Vietnam is higher than other Southeast Asian nations and 10 times higher than that of developed countries.

The official said that many deaths caused by drowning in Vietnam could be prevented if adults supervised the kids' activities more closely.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)