Commentary 26/08/13 When a child's courage becomes a death trap

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A spate of child drownings highlights Vietnam’s urgent need for better water-safety education

Children swim in Bach Yen River in Hue on July 25. (Photo: UCA News)

By Petrus Do

Published: August 13, 2026 06:35 AM GMT

Updated: August 13, 2026 06:35 AM GMT

One afternoon in May, nine schoolchildren swam in a river in northern Phu Tho province after class. When one began struggling in the current, four others jumped in without hesitation. None of the five survived.

Just two days earlier, a similar tragedy in Dak Lak province killed four more children. Then last month, on July 10, five sixth-graders drowned in a reservoir in Lam Dong province.

Three incidents, three regions, one pattern: Vietnamese children are dying not because they can't swim, but because their instinct to save a friend isn't matched by the judgment to protect themselves.

These deaths occurred just weeks before World Drowning Prevention Day, marked each year on July 25 to draw attention to one of the most overlooked causes of child mortality worldwide.

In Vietnam, that reminder carries particular urgency.

A number that speaks for itself

According to Vietnam's Ministry of Health, more than 4,700 people drown in the country every year, nearly 2,000 of them children — placing Vietnam among the countries with the highest rates of child drowning in the Western Pacific region.

Most incidents occur in ponds, lakes, rivers and streams: places rural children can reach easily, but where adult supervision is often absent.

The infrastructure needed to prevent such deaths is largely missing. As of the middle of this year, only about 12 percent of Vietnam's more than 25,000 schools had swimming pools. On average, each school has fewer than one certified swimming instructor.

Physical education is compulsory from first grade through high school, but the curriculum is dominated by soccer, volleyball and basketball — sports that require no costly investment in the way a proper pool does.

Yet what deserves more attention than these figures is a paradox that rescue experts are trying to highlight: knowing how to swim does not mean being safe.

Many recent victims could swim competently in pools. But pool swimming is entirely different from surviving in open water, where hidden currents, drop-offs and slippery vegetation can catch even confident swimmers off guard.

When children find themselves in unexpected danger, their first response is rarely the technique they learned, but panic — and panic can kill a child faster than the inability to swim ever could.

When love lacks wisdom

Perhaps the most haunting element isn't swimming technique at all, but the reflex that turns single drownings into multiple deaths: when children see a friend in trouble, their first instinct is to jump in, regardless of whether they can do so safely.

Rescue specialists say a drowning person's survival instinct makes them thrash with three to four times their normal strength. A child who jumps in without training is almost certain to be grabbed and become the next casualty.

This is not a failure of courage. On the contrary, it springs from genuine affection and a sense of responsibility toward one's friends — the very qualities that any moral education, including in Catholic schools and parishes, hopes to nurture in the young.

But this is precisely where a moral question arises, one worth pausing over for educators and pastoral workers alike: love for one's neighbor, however noble, cannot be separated from wisdom in how it is exercised.

Christian moral tradition has long regarded prudence as one of the four cardinal virtues — not opposed to charity, but the very condition that allows charity to bear fruit rather than become self-destructive.

Teaching children to help their friends is essential — but without teaching them to help wisely, that goodness can become a fatal trap.

Experts are unambiguous: never jump in to rescue someone yourself. Instead, call an adult and throw anything that floats — a bucket, a jerrycan, a dry log — for the victim to grab. It's a simple skill, teachable anywhere, even without a pool or instructor.

Who will fill the gap?

Vietnam faces a double vacuum: a lack of adult supervision when children are most at risk — after school, unwatched at rivers and ponds — and a lack of survival education that's practiced in water, not just taught on shore. Many programs fall into that exact trap, teaching safety on dry land so lessons never become instinct in a real emergency.

In rural areas, where a proper pool may be years away, the question isn't whether the state will eventually build enough infrastructure, but who can fill the supervision and education gap now.

Faith communities — with their parish networks, youth groups, and the religious congregations already running rural schools — could play a quiet but vital role.

Summer catechism sessions need no pool to teach children to recognize dangerous water, stay calm, and never rescue someone alone. These lessons cost nothing but could save a life.

Catholic social teaching has long insisted that the dignity and life of children, especially the poor and vulnerable, must be a priority for every community, not the state alone.

Each summer that passes without concrete action means more families facing a grief beyond repair — parents burying children who did not lack love, but who were never taught how that love could be exercised without costing them everything.

Swimming is a subject that can be completed, graded and certified. Survival in water has no such scale, only the fragile line between life and death. It is a lesson no Vietnamese child should have to learn by paying for it with their own life.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.