This summer again, the waters are deadly. Public Health France (SPF) published this Friday its first assessment of drowning in France. Between June 1 and July 12, 2023, the organization recorded 362 drownings, including 109 deaths, or about a third of the cases.
This six-week milestone marks a 19% drop compared to 2021, but the SPF highlights a distorting effect. This decline is primarily “attributable to the month of June,” which alone benefits from a 28% drop in the number of drownings. In question, the particular climatic conditions.
“In June 2023, despite a national thermal surplus of +2.5°C (…), climatic conditions (temperatures, rainfall and sun) were generally less favorable in the southern half of France, an area where drownings tend to be the most frequent, the most numerous,” says the health agency.
Other elements may explain this statistical difference, in particular an abnormal increase in the number of cases in 2021. “The context of lifting the restrictive measures deployed for the management of the Covid-19 epidemic associated with favorable weather conditions for swimming could explain part of the of the large number of drownings during this period”.
Mortality is not falling
Fewer drownings, of course, but just as many fatal accidents. The agency, which stresses that “the number of drownings and deaths remains high during this period,” highlighted a generally “stable” number of drowning deaths between 2021 and 2023.
Deaths by drowning concern “essentially adults”, in about 9 out of 10 cases. They are also the most affected by cases of fatal drowning, with slightly more than one in two cases.
“The ratio of drownings followed by death (number of deaths compared to all drownings) tends to increase from 25% in 2021 to 30% in 2023.”
The Public Health Agency reiterates its alert message, due to a risk that concerns all ages, and all places.
Source: BFM TV
