HANOI, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Three male students aged 13 and 18 from Vietnam's central Nghe An province drowned when taking a bath in a river, local media reported on Monday.
One body of the trio from Thanh Chuong district was found in Lam River on Sunday night, and local agencies are still searching for the other two, online newspaper VietnamPlus reported.
Of the three victims, two 18-year-old students were scheduled to take the national high school graduation and college entrance exam on Tuesday.
"Drowning is a silent epidemic claiming more than 2,000 children's lives per year in Vietnam," an official from the World Health Organization in Vietnam told Xinhua recently, adding that the rate of child drowning in Vietnam is higher than other Southeast Asian nations and 10 times higher than that of developed countries.
The official said that many deaths caused by drowning in Vietnam were preventable, and the drowning rate among local children would fall if adults supervise kids' activities more closely, and more kids were provided with survival swimming and water safety skills.
