Four children have been confirmed dead after drowning in the Volta Lake at Konkoma, in the Bono East Region.
The deceased are Ibrahim Abdul Kadri, 8; Mubarik Aziz, 12; Aliu Nasiru Malachi, 6; and Umaru Nasiru Mayachi, 11.
State media Graphic said that the four had been missing since Monday, 28 February 2022.
The Pru East District Police Commander DSP Eric Awiadeam, who confirmed the news, said investigations had begun to unravel the mystery surrounding the drowning.
He said in the early hours of Tuesday, 1 March 2022, the Assemblyman of the Konkoma Electoral Area, Philip Ngyemenko, and one Nashiru Mayachi came to the Yeji Police Station and informed the police that the bodies of the missing children had been found in the lake.
DSP Awiadeam said the police and the complainants proceeded to Konkoma, a community closer to the Volta lake.
He said the bodies of the four children were found lying in supine positions with blood oozing from their nostrils.
DSP Awiadeam said police inspected the bodies but found no marks of violence on them.
The bodies have since been deposited at the St. Mathias Catholic Hospital mortuary at Yeji for preservation and autopsy.
Drowning trends
Hundreds of deaths are recorded yearly due to drowning.
According to WHO data published in 2018, drowning deaths in Ghana reached 1,206 or 0.60% of total deaths.
At the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, the biggest referral hospital in the Central Region, the leading cause of injury deaths were road traffic injuries (42.9%) and drowning (30%), according to research spearheaded by a Senior lecturer of surgery at the University of Cape Coast Dr Martin T. Morna.
The researchers used data from January 2012 to December 2018.
In the Greater Accra Region, the Ghana Police Hospital have issued cautions to the public in the past to be safety conscious after receiving bodies of people who got drowned at beaches close to the health facility.
The Pathology Department of the hospital recorded 68 persons drowning in 2017, with eight being females.
A total of 48 drowning cases had been recorded, 10 of them being females as of November 2018.
Notable drowning incidents
- In November 2021, the headmaster of St Charles Lwanga Roman Catholic Junior High School in the Saboba District of the Northern was remanded into police custody for his involvement in the drowning of nine students.
Mr Emmanuel Chinja, 43, was slapped with manslaughter and scheduled to reappear at a Tamale District Court on November 29, 2021.
The suspect was arrested and detained on Saturday after it emerged that the students drowned after he allegedly sent them to harvest rice on his farm.
A total of 31 students embarked on the mission, but their boat capsized as they crossed the Oti river back to the school.
The incident is said to have occurred at Buntu, a farming community near Saboba.
Officials from National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and some residents managed to retrieve the bodies.
- In October 2021, at least four other young people died when their boat capsized on the River Offin in the Ashanti Region.
After nearly three days of searching for those missing, their bodies were pulled from the river.
- In March 2021, about 13 teenagers drowned at the Apam Beach in the Central Region.
According to a police report, while the children were swimming, a high tide swallowed them up.
The timely intervention of a Good Samaritan saved the lives of two of them as they were rescued and sent to the St. Luke Hospital to be attended to.
But the rest could not make it.