On March 25, the Department of Health of An Giang province coordinated with the Global Health Policy Campaign - Campaign for Tobacco - Free Kids in Vietnam to organize a conference to summarize the project "Deploying effective and sustainable interventions to prevent and combat child drowning in An Giang province" for the 2024-2026 period and call for investment for the 2026-2030 period.
According to the An Giang Provincial Department of Health, after the merger between An Giang and Kien Giang provinces, the province currently has more than 822,000 children; of which children in special circumstances are more than 7,300 children, children at risk of falling into special circumstances are more than 49,400 children. With the terrain characteristics of the province, many canals, rivers, and coasts still contain many potential risks of causing injuries and drowning accidents in children. In addition, a part of families and parents of children have to go to work far away, lacking the regular care and full supervision of adults. Many children drown at a young age, do not know how to swim, and do not have skills to respond when at risk of drowning.
In the period 2024 - 2026, the above non-project has funded a total non-refundable capital of more than 177,000 USD.
From the above funding and the state budget of the province and socialized funds, units and localities in the province have integrated with the implementation of programs, plans, and activities on children's work and prevention and control of child injuries. Specifically, such as: organizing launch ceremonies, training of instructors for safe swimming and swimming teachers; organizing knowledge competitions on drowning prevention and control; strengthening information and propaganda on mass media and organizing dozens of direct propaganda sessions for officials, students, and parents; organizing hundreds of swimming classes for more than 5,000 children to participate; building and replicating the models "Safe House", "Safe School", "Safe Community" for prevention and control of injuries...
Deputy Director of An Giang Provincial Department of Health, Head of the Provincial Project Management Board for Drowning Prevention and Control Tran Quoc Tuan assessed that the implementation of the non-project was basically successful and effective. At the same time, he emphasized that it is necessary to continue to promote commitments and companionship of departments, agencies, branches, unions, communes, wards, special zones, families and communities in protecting children from the risk of drowning in order to maintain sustainable effective interventions through mobilizing resources for child drowning prevention and control in the coming time.
An Giang Department of Health also said that the project implementation still has some limitations and difficulties because the team of commune-level civil servants working for children concurrently takes on many tasks, often changes, affecting the monitoring, management, evaluation, advising on the implementation of propaganda, and the implementation of regulations related to the project are not timely and widespread.
The Provincial Department of Health proposed that the Campaign for Tobacco – Free Kids Organization and related units pay attention to expanding the scale, developing early warning tools and interactive information platforms to serve the goal of sustainably reducing child drowning accidents; promote propaganda to enhance family responsibility; provide knowledge and skills on preventing child drowning accidents to students in educational institutions; organize communication campaigns to raise awareness, knowledge and skills in preventing child drowning accidents for the community.
