Royal Life Saving Australia was involved with thirteen presentations at the Australian Water Safety Conference which was recently held on the Gold Coast. The highlight was Mark FitzSimons, Royal Life Saving Australiaâ„¢s Remote Pools Officer being awarded the Best Presentation Award.

Royal Life Saving Australia was involved with thirteen presentations at the Australian Water Safety Conference which was recently held on the Gold Coast. The highlight was Mark FitzSimons, Royal Life Saving Australia’s Remote Pools Officer being awarded the Best Presentation Award.

Mark was awarded this award for his presentation on the RLSSA Remote Pools Project. Mark has been working with Remote Indigenous communities across the Northern Territory for the past two years to help them establish self managed sustainable aquatic facilities providing a variety of water safety and pool operation programs.

Focusing on strategies to reduce the rate of accidental drowning in Australia the conference allowed a range of Australian and international experts to share best practice, research and water safety information. Over 100 delegates from around Australia and overseas attended the conference.

Even in a developed country such as Australia, drowning is the number one killer of children aged 0-5, leading some experts to call it a hidden epidemic.’ The keynote address presented by Pete Peterson, former US Ambassador to Vietnam and President of the Alliance for Safe Children focused on the huge drowning problem faced in Asian countries like Bangladesh, China, Vietnam and India. Over 20,000 children drown every year in Bangladesh alone.