WHO highlights devastating global impact of drowning was recorded by Global Incident Tracker on Saturday, 2 June 2018 at 02:24 UTC. The event is classified as a maritime accident incident with a severity rating of Severe, and was detected through the World Health Organization (WHO).
• Every hour, every day, more than 40 people lose their lives to drowning • 372 000 people drown each year, with those under 5 years at greatest risk News release 17 November 2014 ¦ GENEVA - WHO’s first "Global report on drowning: preventing a leading killer" reveals that drowning claims the lives of 372 000 people each year and is among the 10 leading causes of death for children and young people in every region. Other stark findings from the report include: globally, over half of all drowning deaths are among those aged under 25 years; the highest rates for drowning are among children under 5 years of age; males are 2 times more likely to drown than females; more than 90% of drowning occurs in low- and middle-income countries, with the highest rates in the African, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions. The report calls for a substantial scaling-up of efforts a
Where this happened
The incident is located in Philippines (Asia), whose capital is Manila. Historically, Philippines is most affected by typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and floods. You can follow every incident recorded in this country, updated live, on the Philippines incident tracker.
Approximate coordinates of the reported event are 12.900°, 121.800°. The marker on the map above shows this position; for news-derived reports the location reflects the place named in media coverage and may represent a district or city rather than an exact site.
Understanding maritime accident events
Ship, ferry and boat sinkings, collisions and fires at sea. Overloading, poor weather routing, missing safety equipment and weak enforcement drive most ferry and small-boat disasters, particularly on routes where demand far exceeds licensed capacity.
How severity is rated
Global Incident Tracker rates every event on a four-step scale — Minor, Moderate, Severe and Extreme — derived from the source signal: earthquake magnitude, official GDACS alert colour, or the volume of independent media reporting for news-derived incidents. This event is currently rated Severe. Ratings can change as more information becomes available, and a rating is a monitoring signal rather than an official government assessment.
Safety guidance for maritime accident situations
- Wear the life jacket before you need it, not after.
- Locate exits and muster points when you board any vessel.
- Do not overload small boats and refuse routes where capacity is clearly exceeded.
- In water, minimise movement to conserve heat and stay with floating debris if rescue is expected.
- Follow only official instructions from local authorities and emergency services — this page is a monitoring record, not an emergency alert.
Data and verification
This record was generated automatically from the World Health Organization (WHO) and de-duplicated against our archive. Early reports for any incident can be revised: locations get refined, magnitudes are recalculated and impact figures change as assessments arrive. We deliberately do not publish casualty numbers unless an official source states them. The original source report is linked at the top of this page.
Keep watching the situation on our live world incident map, browse every maritime accidents we track on the Maritime Accident tracker, or see today's global picture on the incidents today page.
Timeline and sources
Officially recorded
An official record exists from World Health Organization. That confirms the event was recorded; figures quoted from news reports are not confirmed by it.
How statuses are decided · the number of reports is never treated as confirmation.
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· received · event time 2 Jun 2018, 02:24 UTCFirst report Humanitarian agency report
First recorded from World Health Organization.
Times are when this site received each report, in UTC; the event time is shown where the source gave one. Copies of one syndicated story count as one report.
Conditions at the time
Light rain of 3.5 mm was recorded, and the temperature peaked at 29°C. Conditions are shown for context only — they do not establish a cause.
Weather reanalysis for this location and date via Open-Meteo.