In the swimming pool

Lifeguard resuscitates boy who had gone under

The poor toddler was flown to the hospital in Passau.

(Bild: Markus Schütz, Krone KREATIV)

You can't "guard" small children closely enough! This was once again dramatically demonstrated on Monday at around 5.30 p.m. during a drowning emergency at the swimming pool in St. Martin im Mühlkreis. Eyewitnesses reported that a three-year-old drowned in the water on the slide. The lifeguard was able to resuscitate him.

You can't "guard" small children closely enough! This was dramatically demonstrated once again on Monday at around 5.30 pm during a drowning emergency at the swimming pool in St. Martin im Mühlkreis. According to eyewitnesses, a three-year-old boy drowned in the water on the slide. His mother was probably the first to discover him and save him. The toddler was already completely blue in the face and was no longer moving. However, the lifeguard managed to successfully resuscitate the little one with a short resuscitation. The three-year-old regained consciousness, was responsive, but was gasping heavily.

Flown to the hospital in Passau
Sent by the Red Cross, the rescue helicopter "Europa 3", two ambulances and an emergency doctor arrived at the small outdoor pool in the Rohrbach district. After almost an hour, the little patient was flown to the hospital in Passau by the emergency helicopter. The hospital in the Bavarian border town was the nearest alternative because the emergency rooms in the hospitals in Linz and Wels were "bursting at the seams".

Unfortunately, such emergencies are not that rare
Unfortunately, drowning emergencies involving small children are not uncommon: On July 9, for example, a 20-month-old girl had been splashing around with her brother (5) in an inflatable whirlpool in St. Aegidi, wearing a child's life jacket. Suddenly there was silence: the father discovered his daughter floating lifeless at the bottom. A few days later, the little girl died in hospital.

A study according to which one in five children in Austria is at risk of drowning is also alarming. Almost 134,000 children and young people cannot swim and a further 93,000 can only swim very poorly.