HANOI, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Three girls from Vietnam's central Quang Binh province drowned when taking a bath in a river, Vietnam News Agency reported on Thursday.
After attending the school-year's closing ceremony on Thursday morning, eight students of Thanh Thach junior high school in Tuyen Hoa district swam in the nearby Gianh River, but three of them drowned.
The trio, all born in 2007, slid and went missing. Their bodies were found few hours later.
"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.
