HANOI, June 25 (Xinhua) -- Three siblings aged 10, eight and six from Vietnam's central Quang Binh province drowned in a local river, Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday.
The trio, including two girls and one boy, were taking a bath in Gianh River in Quang Binh's Tuyen Hoa district when they fell into a deep hole and drowned on Monday afternoon.
Within less than a month, at least 16 people, mostly children, have drowned in Quang Binh, according to the provincial authorities.
"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.
