Bath seats do not protect against drowning. A British authority launches the alert, after an upsurge in accidents in the bath. A child in the water should always be supervised.
Bathing aids are intended to assist, not replace, adults. A British authority is sounding the alarm after observing an increase in accidental drownings among toddlers. A young child should never be left unattended, recalls the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).
Never unattended
In the UK, 13 young children drown each year and around 100 narrowly escaped it. In those who drowned under the age of 2, a third of cases involve a bath seat. It is not the device that is in question, but the decline in parental vigilance. “They can give a false sense of security,” warns David Walker of RoSPA. “If not supervised, young children can tip the bath seat and become trapped, or extricate themselves from it, and the consequences can be fatal,” confirms Dr Yvonne Doyle of Public Health England. “Babies and young children should never be left unsupervised in the bath, not even for a minute. “
16 drownings in the bath in 2012
France is not spared by this type of accident either. In children under 4, drowning is the seconde cause of accidental death, after road accidents. According to a survey carried out in 2004 by the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS), a fall is the most frequent cause of accidents involving a bathing aid, followed by drowning. And in 8 out of 10 cases, the lack of monitoring is the cause.
Vigilance is essential for toddlers. As the Institute for Prevention and Health Education (Inpes) has regularly reminded us, just 30 centimeters of water for a child to drown. The youngest “do not have the capacity to get up when they fall into the water, even in shallow depths”, also underlines the InVS. in its 2012 Noyades survey. The year of this investigation, 16 drownings were recorded. Half concerned children under 6 years old.
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