The best medicine for any disease is prevention. Millions of people around the world die from preventable deaths every year, and many of those deaths were caused by drowning. Not everyone has the chance to be saved by a lifeguard, thus we should help everyone to become their own lifeguard.
Our Red Cross club from Auckland International College had worked together with New Zealand Dragon Boat Association (NZDBA) to provide drowning prevention training for people in Auckland since 2020. My brother and I continued these efforts by coordinating more seminars with Westlake Boys High School for several years and trained more than a thousand people.
WAI WISE is a drowning prevention course that will provide medical knowledge of the risks on water, as well as first aid training for those rescued from drowning. This will greatly improve people’s chances of survival in water not only for themselves, but for others as well. The course also includes training in water for how to do survival positions in water that will minimize body heat loss and save stamina whether you are alone or have others nears you, how to rescue someone that are drowning as a bystander, and how to give emergency medical care for people post-drowning.
By securing people’s safety on water, we could contribute greatly to reducing the number of deaths from drowning, and therefore reducing the medical expenses on our society.
