Rise in drowning deaths worry police

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Police in Nkhotakota have expressed concern over the rise in number of drowning cases in the district.

The concern has come following two separate incidents which occurred on Thursday, October 05, 2017 when two children aged 2 and 10 died after drowning.

Nkhotakota police deputy spokesperson Paul Malimwe said the first incident which occurred at Manyamba village in Traditional Authority Mwadzama involved 10 year-old Sumaya Yusuf.

According to Malimwe, on this fateful day Sumaya with her friends went to the lake for swimming. In the course of swimming, the girl went missing.

 She was later found floating dead on the waters of Lake Malawi at Manyamba fishing dock in the district.

The second incident which occurred at Kachuma village in Traditional Authority Malengachanzi involved two year-old Finiles Foster who was found dead in a well.

“Finiles left home with other three young ones playing around. Suddenly she went missing. Efforts to trace her whereabouts proved futile by then, only to be found lifeless and floating in the well which is just some metres away from home,” Malimwe said.

Police together with medical personnel visited scenes of the incidents and the medical personnel conducted postmortem on both dead bodies which revealed that the deaths were due to suffocation, secondary to drowning.

Nkhotakota police station has registered 17 cases of drowning from January to October this year as compared to 8 cases which were reported last year in the same period.

Meanwhile, police are advising the general public to take good care of their children and avoid fishing on windy days as it has been established that most victims are fishermen, seconded by children.

As part of reducing cases of drowning, police have organised awareness and sensitization meetings in the district to inform communities of how they can minimise chances of drowning.

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