NEW DELHI: Advaitha Verma drowned in Pawna Lake in Lonavala, Maharashtra, on June 23 last year. The 18-year-old’s death became a turning point for his parents, Sudesh Verma and Renu Kaul Verma, who chose to transform their grief into a mission to educate people and spread awareness about how to prevent drowning to save lives. They are launching a nationwide online Drowning Prevention Awareness Campaign on Friday. July 25 is officially recognised by the United Nations as World Drowning Prevention Day.Advaitha’s mother recalled her son and his friends going for a picnic to Pawna Dam where he died. “There were no safety measures like lifeguards or signboards, and I lost my child in an untimely manner,” said Renu. “The pain will remain forever, but now we have decided to launch a campaign to save people’s lives, especially children, from drowning because life is precious.”The teenager was a music prodigy and the Vermas will appropriately employ music to reach out to the masses. ‘Advaitha – The Symphony Music Award 2025′, a national singing contest that combines passion with purpose, will be held at New Delhi in Sept, with entries for the competition being accepted till Aug 15.The campaign will use music as a medium to spread awareness and inspire action on drowning prevention. The parents will visit different schools and colleges to educate children about drowning prevention. “What we have faced, we don’t want any other parents to suffer,” the mother said.Sudesh and Renu were emphatic that drowning was preventable and awareness about this could save lives. That is why they aim to warn, educate and inspire a national awakening around water safety to ensure that no more dreams are lost to silent waters. “With every drowning, our society must rise like a symphony – not in silence, but in solidarity,” said Sudesh.In Delhi, according to govt data, 211 drowning cases were logged last year in which 118 lives were lost and 66 rescued. In the first six months of this year, 102 people have lost their lives to drowning. Harish, who is in charge of a 15-member team of divers in north Delhi involved in rescue operations, said that in many cases they found children went to bathe and drowned due to riverine tides. Others, he said, died because they ventured into waters for bathing without knowing how to swim. There are cases also of people dying while saving others.The city also saw deaths in swimming pools. One of the cases was reported last month in which a six-year-old boy allegedly drowned in a swimming pool at an MCD community centre in northwest Delhi’s Pitampura. His family alleged that there were no safety measures in place at the pool.According to the World Health Organization, at least three million people have drowned to death in the last decade. Last year, it listed drowning as the fourth leading cause of death for children aged 1-4 years and the third for children aged 5-14 years. WHO says 92% of drowning deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
