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Deaths from Drowning

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Worldwide deaths from poisoning, falls, fires and drowning are equally common, but drowning particularly affects men under 40 years old and very young boys. Worldwide death from drowning is more common in rivers than in the sea. Many drownings that occur in adults are after they have been drinking alcohol. A similar number of drownings occur in children under 4 years old who are poorly supervised near water. Toddlers can drown in shallow water, paddling pools and little streams.

Drownings caused 0.7% of all deaths worldwide in 2002, an average of 61 deaths per million people per year.

International Classification of Diseases-10 codes: W65-W74,

Territories are sized in proportion to the absolute number of people who died from drowning in one year.

• Cause of Death Map Index
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• Data files: Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
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• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page