175 Effectiveness of survival swim intervention in reducing child drowning in Viet Nam

<h3>Background</h3> Nearly 2,000 children under 16 lives lost of drowning every year. Since 2018, the survival swim intervention launched 115 communes from 29 districts of 12 highest burden provinces with an aim to reduce child drowning deaths and sustain the pilot model for nation wide adaption. <h3>Objective</h3> Measure the outcomes and evaluate the effectiveness for further policy development, investment of sustainability and local ownership. <h3>Methods</h3> A mixed method study design used with a combination of secondary data analysis, household survey, key informant interview. Study conducted in 42 districts of 2 provinces (both intervention and non intervention areas) <h3>Results</h3> Over the last 5 years, 28,819 children aged 6–15 were trained with standardized survival swim program (25 meters swim and 90 seconds float). 93.7% of them eventually passed the final test. The rate of children can swim was increased from 14.7% to 32.6% after intervention that is higher than national rate (19.2%). The child mortality rate decreased slowly in the intervention group and increased in the control group, both groups fell sharply in 2021 (possibly due to COVID 19 measures), rising again in 2022. The fundamental change in the intervention group is more stable. Meanwhile, the control group has large changes in the years 2020 and 2021, that the mortality rate has not changed significantly compared to 2018 (before intervention). Based on these estimates, in a hypothetical population of 100,000 children aged 0 to 15 years old, 98.6 would fatally drown without the DP intervention. An estimate of 31,62 deaths averted per 100,000 children with the intervention from 2017–2022. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Mortality data at the survival swim intervention areas show a statistically significant decrease year by year. Further sustainable policy development and government investment, local ownerships are required to maintain the value and duplicate the model at nation wide.