Background: Child drowning has seen a decrease over the past two decades; however recent trends are showing that rates are now not decreasing fast enough.
Methods: A descriptive overview of drowning among children (ages 0-4-years) is presented. Child drowning data from Royal Life Saving’s National Fatal Drowning Database were analysed. Age-specific mortality rates and trends were calculated.
Results: Child drowning deaths were three times higher after the first year of life and mainly occurred in a swimming pool. Primary activity was an unintentional fall into water followed by bathing and swimming. Trends over time identified a statistically significant decrease between 2005/06 to 2022/23.
Conclusion: Drowning prevention strategies and pool fencing legislation have been effective in reducing child drowning deaths over time in swimming pools. However drowning incidents continue to involve inadequate supervision, highlighting the need for further initiatives that focus on changing supervisory behaviours.

Background: One of the three primary approaches to drowning prevention is safety legislation. An epidemic of child pool drownings began in the early 1970s, not only in Australia but in many first-world nations. In Australia, public advocacy for pool safety failed as a preventive approach; and safety legislation was introduced independently in several States and local municipalities. Over the ensuring decades, toddler pool drownings were gradually eliminated. Independent of this development, child safety improved generally. One reports here a research study to measure qualitatively the specific effect of safety legislation on this specific example of child trauma.
Method: Data from the ongoing Brisbane Drowning Study (1975-current) and privileged RLSSA access to the national Coronial files.
Results: Pool drowning rates progressively fell following the introduction of safety legislation, with almost complete elimination. Parallel assessment of all child trauma deaths, as a non-specific variable, was assessed. The results indicate that focused, syndrome-specific safety legislation will reduce at least 60-80% of child fatalities, as a conservative assessment. It is proposed that this figure can be used in advocacy for the prevention of other types of child trauma.
Conclusion: Safety legislation is a powerful and effective form of drowning prevention, if targeted to specific emersion syndromes.