Vietnam co-founds UN Group of Friends on Drowning PreventionThe UN Group of Friends on Drowning Prevention made debut at an event co-chaired by the permanent missions of Vietnam and Fiji at the UN headquarters in New York on March 22. The event to debut the UN Group of Friends on Drowning Prevention on March 22Addressing the event, Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of Vietnam’s Permanent Mission to the UN, stressed that drowning claims 360,000 lives a year across the globe, higher than malnutrition or maternal mortality. Statistics show that drowning usually occurs in low- and middle-income countries while the drowning rate is also higher among vulnerable groups. She noted that Africa has the highest drowning rate, but the highest child drowning rate is in the Asia-Pacific region. With the support of the Bloomberg Philanthropies and Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the UN Group of Friends on Drowning Prevention was founded by the permanent missions of Vietnam, Fiji, Bangladesh, Ireland, Tanzania and Thailand to the UN with a view to improving public awareness of and promoting support for drowning prevention.