ANP
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NOS News•today, 00:01
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Eighty residents of the Netherlands died by drowning last year, reports the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). That’s 27 less than in 2020, when relatively many people drowned. Most drownings (73 percent) occurred in open water.
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Among the drowning victims are a relatively large number of migrants with a non-European background and their children. According to Statistics Netherlands, the risk of drowning among non-European migrants under the age of 20 is nine to ten times greater than among young people born in the Netherlands.
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Compared to the 1950s, the number of drownings has fallen sharply. At that time, 400 to 500 people died every year in the Netherlands from drowning. This number has remained approximately the same since 2000, with an outlier last year.
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Suicide
These figures concern so-called accidental drownings. It concerns people who, for example, drowned in the swimming pool, in their bathtub or in a lake or who fell drunk in a canal.
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In addition, last year there were 86 people who took their own lives by drowning, and 38 people who drowned in a traffic accident. Men and people over 60 are overrepresented in both categories.
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