About one Quebec child per day taken to ER for drowning, near-drowning: research [Video]

An average of one child a day goes to the emergency room for a drowning or near-drowning in Quebec during the summer months, new research has found. 

The study will be officially presented in September at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Paediatric Surgeons, but Dr. Hussein Wissanji, a pediatric surgeon at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, says he’s publicizing the results now in the hopes of preventing deaths this summer.

“I thought this data was too important to miss a season, miss a summer, because if it can help some children for prevention, that’s really why we’re doing the research,” he said in a phone interview.

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He says the study, which he led along with Quebec’s public health institute and coroner’s office, looked at all children’s drowning deaths, ER visits or hospital admissions between 2017 …