One child a week is admitted on average to Mater Dei Hospital in summer due to a drowning or near-drowning incident, according to a consultant paediatrician.
Simon Attard Montalto was speaking to Times of Malta after the news of the death of a six-month-old girl who drowned in a bath in St Paul’s Bay. A magisterial inquiry is currently under way into the incident.
He explained that most of the drowning or near-drowning incidents took place in pools and the sea, but some also took place in baths.
“It only takes minutes for a child to drown. These incidents happen when a parent just diverts their attention for a minute or so either while talking to their friend at the beach or answering the door at home,” he said.
Once a child has stopped breathing, it takes four minutes of lack of oxygen to cause irreversible brain damage, and not much longer than that for the body to go into cardiac arrest, he explained.
While a lower volume of water in the bath did lessen the risk of drowning, it did not remove it altogether. Attard Montalto advised care-givers not to feel “a false sense of security” by just filling the bath an inch.
“A shallow puddle is all that is needed for a child to drown. If the child slips and cannot right themselves and if their mouth is immersed in water, the risk is there,” he warned.
This also applied to bathing child in basins.
It was also a risk trust an older sibling to watch over the child, or to think children were safe because the pool was gated. Prevention of these incidents from constant supervision was key, Attard Montalto said, especially since only 10 per cent of children survived when they were given CPR, even by trained professionals.
“The outcome is very grim so you really want not to get there.”
However, if a drowning incident did take place, then care-givers were advised to call emergency and be prepared with some knowledge of CPR, which they could administer in the meantime.
“Ideally the person is trained, but any attempted CPR is better than nothing,” he said.
This involved putting the child on the side to remove as much fluid as possible, and in the case of babies, taking ordinary breath, placing the mouth over the baby’s own mouth and nose and just breathing into their airway.
This should be done at least five times, at which point, the caregiver would hopefully feel the chest of the baby move. It would then need to be followed by chest compressions.