Silent Epidemic: WHO Highlights Drowning Risks Across South-East Asia in 2025

The WHO’s 2025 report shows South-East Asia suffers nearly one-third of global drowning deaths, with young children and men most affected. Proven community solutions exist, but weak data, uneven policies, and climate risks keep drowning a major yet preventable crisis.

Drowning, described by the World Health Organization (WHO) and supported by research from institutes such as the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), the George Institute for Global Health, and UNICEF country programmes, remains one of the most overlooked but preventable causes of death in South-East Asia. The WHO’s South-East Asia Regional Status Report on Drowning 2025 highlights that the region accounts for nearly one-third of all drowning deaths worldwide, with an estimated 83,000 people losing their lives in 2021. Despite a 48% decline in deaths since 2000, the burden remains immense, striking hardest in poor, rural, and climate-vulnerable communities. Behind these statistics are the everyday tragedies of children falling into unprotected ponds, fishers braving stormy seas, and families displaced by monsoon floods.

Children and Men at the Epicentre

The report makes clear that children, especially those aged 0–4 years, are the most vulnerable group. In Bangladesh, they represent more than half of all drowning deaths, a devastating blow to young families. The problem often stems from parents working long hours while children wander near open water. Men and boys are also disproportionately affected, accounting for more than 80% of fatalities in some countries. This imbalance is linked to occupational risks, fishing, boating, and informal labour near water, as well as cultural tendencies toward risk-taking. Informal workers such as boat operators and day labourers often lack basic safety measures, and lifejackets are rarely used. People with disabilities, largely invisible in national records, face even higher risks, especially during floods or storms when evacuation is chaotic.

Climate Change Intensifies the Risks

The geography of South-East Asia magnifies the crisis. Rising sea levels, extreme rainfall, and seasonal floods regularly endanger communities, and climate change is amplifying these threats. Cyclones sweeping across Bangladesh, flash floods in Nepal, and coastal surges in Myanmar translate into lives lost to drowning every year. The report stresses that drowning cannot be seen in isolation as a health problem; it is equally a climate, poverty, and inequality issue. Vulnerable populations live closest to unprotected water, often in makeshift housing, and are the least likely to have access to swimming lessons, emergency response, or protective infrastructure.

Community Solutions Show the Way

Amid grim statistics, the report highlights hopeful interventions. In Bangladesh, Anchal daycare centres have provided safe supervision for children and reduced toddler drowning deaths by 80%. The SwimSafe programme has trained over 700,000 children in survival swimming, showing a remarkable 96% protective effect. In Sri Lanka, the Sayuru SMS-based storm warning system now reaches more than 100,000 fishers, preventing countless weather-related tragedies. Thailand has run a nationwide child drowning prevention campaign since 2008, cutting child fatalities by half. In Nepal, community-level drowning assessments launched in 2023 spurred local governments to design their first prevention plans. These examples prove that small, low-cost interventions, if scaled nationally, can save thousands of lives.

Policy Gaps and a Call for Action

National responses, however, remain inconsistent. Bangladesh took a historic step in 2025 with the approval of its first national drowning prevention strategy, targeting a 50% reduction in deaths by 2030. Thailand’s 20-year health plan also includes a goal to halve drowning deaths, while Sri Lanka has woven drowning into its injury prevention framework. But many countries, including Bhutan, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste, have no comprehensive national strategies, leaving interventions fragmented and donor-dependent. Legislation is patchy: while most countries require lifejackets on passenger boats, few enforce fencing around swimming pools or regulate alcohol near water. Weak enforcement undermines even well-written laws. The Maldives presents a unique case where older adults, rather than children, are the primary victims, reflecting tourism-driven risks distinct from the rest of the region.

Underlying everything is a stark data gap. Between 2018 and 2023, official reports recorded just over 62,000 drowning deaths, far below the WHO’s estimate of 83,000. This shortfall highlights chronic underreporting and inconsistent systems across health, police, and disaster agencies. Non-fatal drowning, which often leaves survivors with lifelong disabilities, is almost invisible in statistics. Without reliable data, governments cannot design or fund effective strategies.

The WHO calls for urgent, coordinated action across five areas: every country should adopt national drowning strategies with measurable targets; community interventions such as childcare centres, swimming lessons and storm alert systems must be scaled up; stronger safety laws for boats, pools and alcohol use should be enacted and enforced; data systems must be expanded to capture both fatal and non-fatal drowning; and countries should collaborate regionally to share knowledge and resources. These steps demand political commitment, as preventing drowning requires more than technical fixes; it requires embedding safety in health, education, disaster, and climate agendas.

The report delivers a sobering message: drowning is not inevitable. It is a silent epidemic claiming tens of thousands of lives that could be saved each year with proven, affordable solutions. The next five years will be decisive, as climate change intensifies hazards and inequalities widen. South-East Asia now has the data, the tested models, and the international backing to act. Whether it can translate this into sustained national action will determine whether drowning remains a hidden tragedy or becomes one of the region’s great public health success stories.