Which areas in Europe have the highest death rate due to drowning?
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I’ve been wanting to make a map of the swimming ability of people in Europe. Sadly, there is no data on that. There is however data of the drowning death rate. Although it does not necessarily say anything about the swimming ability of people in those areas, there probably is a strong relation.
One would expect water rich areas to have a higher rate of drownings, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. That’s probably also because people in water-rich areas are more likely to know how to swim.
There does seem to be a big difference between the western and eastern half of Europe. The western half of Europe (except France) has a far lower drowning rate than the eastern half. France is and interesting case, as their drowning death rate is clearly higher than all nearby countries.
The highest drowning rates can be found in Latvia, Lithuania and eastern Romania. All having a far higher rate than any other area in Europe. Estonia, Romania, north-eastern Poland, Brittany and Southern Greece also have a high drowning rate.
The rates seem to be the lowest in most of Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Malta, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark and the UK.
Data for this map comes from Eurostat. The number are based on a 3-year average
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