Children drowning and falling ill in flood-affected areas

The increasing incidents of children drowning in the floodwaters and getting infected with waterborne diseases across the country is extremely worrying. Recently, a woman lost her three-year-old son in the Teesta as he slipped out of her lap and fell into the river while she was on a boat trying to go to a flood shelter, and a seven-year-old girl in Lalmonirhat's Patgram upazila drowned in a deep hole in which stagnant floodwater had collected due to illegal lifting of stones. The girl drowned there when she was crossing knee-deep water to get to a road. Such incidents have become common in the flood-hit areas as families have been forced to take shelter on streets and embankments under the open sky, losing their homesteads and belongings to the flood. 

According to local health authorities, at least 24 children have drowned in floodwater in Jamalpur this month, while in Thakurgaon and Panchagarh, the number of children drowned in the last two months is 26. Although we do not have sufficient data on children drowning, it can be guessed that the situation could be the same in other flood-affected districts.

Besides drowning, children are also vulnerable to various waterborne diseases. Reportedly, the number of child patients is rapidly increasing in the flood-hit areas as diarrhoea, skin disease and other waterborne diseases are spreading among them. Malnutrition, too, has become a major issue as children in the shelters do not have access to nutritious food and pure drinking water. The halted immunisation programmes in the affected areas is another reason for the high rate of illness among children.

The Unicef has recently estimated that around 1.3 million children in Bangladesh would be affected by flooding this year. Under the circumstances, the government needs to scale up its flood response efforts and take particular measures to save our children from drowning and diseases. Families need to be evacuated to the flood shelters well ahead of time and those shelters need to be made safe for children. Children also need to have safe places in the shelters where they can play without facing any risk of drowning.

The absence of shelters in the remote flood-affected areas has increased the vulnerability of children. So, the government needs to build flood shelters in the areas where it is needed the most. At the same time, awareness needs to be raised among parents about the risk of children drowning. Moreover, flood-affected families need to be provided with pure drinking water and food supplies. The government alone cannot ensure all this; non-government organisations and well-off people of society should also come forward to meet the immediate needs of affected children and their families.