Two young girls drowned in a beel in Sherpur’s Sadar upazila on Friday.The incident occurred at Baleshwar Beel in the Chakpara area of Gazirkhamar. Locals said that around Friday morning, two friends—nine-year-old Fahima Akhter Noon, daughter of Masek Ali, and eight-year-old Jamie, daughter of Joynuddin—went out together to pick flowers from the wetland near their homes. Hours passed, but the girls did not return. Worried, their families began searching frantically. With the help of neighbors, the bodies of the children were eventually recovered from the middle of the beel that same afternoon.
Relatives believe the girls slipped into a deep hole while picking flowers. The water level in the middle of the beel was much higher than they expected, leaving them unable to swim to safety. The sudden tragedy has cast grief over the entire community.
Bangladesh is often described as a land of rivers, canals, and wetlands—water is interwoven with the daily lives of its people. But this blessing of geography has a hidden danger. Drowning remains one of the leading causes of death for children across the country, and experts argue that most cases are preventable.
Data shows the alarming scale of the crisis. A national analysis from January to December 2020 recorded 769 drowning deaths in 425 incidents nationwide. Strikingly, 82 percent of the victims were children, and in 81 percent of cases the deaths occurred without the knowledge of their families. The World Health Organization’s 2014 global report estimated that 43 percent of deaths among Bangladeshi children under five were caused by drowning. Similarly, the 2017 Global Burden of Disease Study by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) reported that 14,029 people drowned in Bangladesh that year alone.
The 2016 Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey paints an even more vivid picture: every day, 30 children under the age of five die from drowning. Around 80 percent of such deaths occur within just 20 yards of the victims’ homes.
Experts emphasize that drowning is not an unavoidable tragedy but rather a preventable cause of death. The World Health Organization recommends ten essential measures to reduce risks, including the creation of community daycare centers, structured swimming lessons, and widespread first aid training. They also call for a coordinated national action plan. Alarmingly, drowning is now the fourth leading cause of death among children under five in Bangladesh. In light of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to reduce under-five mortality to 25 per 1,000 live births by 2030, addressing drowning has become a matter of urgency.
Swimming was almost second nature for Bangladeshi children, especially in rural areas where rivers, ponds, and canals were a part of everyday life. Until just a few decades ago, it was rare to find a child who could not swim. But rapid urbanization has altered this reality. Natural water bodies are disappearing, and in many urban areas, children now grow up without opportunities to learn swimming unless parents actively seek out training programs.
In rural regions, while some children still acquire swimming skills informally, the numbers are declining. Recognizing this, initiatives promoting swimming training for children have been introduced in recent years. These programs, though still limited in scale, are critical to preventing more such tragedies.
The Sherpur incident is a reminder that without vigilance, awareness, and preventive measures, Bangladesh’s waterways—so central to its culture and identity—can also become sites of unbearable loss.
