Life jacket: Between survival and death
Good Samaritans assist one of the survivors at Nsazi in Mukono District yesterday. Photo | Ivan Walunyolo
What you need to know:
This comes after some passengers, who drowned in a Lake Victoria boat accident on Wednesday, were found to have incorrectly worn life jackets.
In an emergency on water, such as a boat capsizing or plane crash, three variables separate life from death for passengers: swimming skills, life jacket and luck.
Swimming abilities can be impaired by environmental barriers, exhaustion or bad health while luck is scant to count on, explaining why experts recommend mandatory use of bouncy vests.
For this reason, flight attendants mandatorily demonstrate use of life vests, available for every passenger either under the seats or armrest, before take-off so that travellers know how to wear and inflate them in the event an aircraft falls from the skies and plunges into water.
The personal flotation devices are available in different sizes, shapes and colours, and our market research shows each piece costs between Shs50,000 and Shs100,000 in Kampala. Some are customised, already inflated, and suitable for use on boats and other vessels.
Those used in planes have to be inflated on needs-basis at exit to prevent escape obstruction and is attached with tubes in which a user blows to inflate the device the more.
A battery component once in contact with water illuminates a bulb on the shoulder for rescuers to see from a distance and respond to distress calls.
The functionality of any life jacket, however, is dependent on the make material, whether a user’s weight matches vest capacity and whether it is properly worn, according to Dr Frederick Oporia.
Dr Oporia is an injury epidemiologist and current heads the Trauma, Injuries, and Disability (TRIAD) Unit at Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) and he told this newspaper in an interview that failure by travellers on water to use life jackets borders on negligence and carelessness.
“People are not still embracing wearing life jackets because of attitude, behaviour and insufficient knowledge. People don’t know that jackets actually work, they don’t know how it is supposed to be worn correctly, others don’t have trust in the quality of the life jackets because they have seen their colleagues wearing jackets but they have still drowned,” he said.
It is a dilemma that played out after some of the life jacket-wearing passengers were found dead on Lake Victoria after gusty winds accompanying buffeting rains keeled over a Kasenyi Landing Site-bound boat on Wednesday night.
The 34 passengers aboard the boat reportedly overloaded with timber, charcoal and silverfish set for their trip from an island in Kalangala District but all, except nine sporting life vests, perished or remained unaccounted for.
Following the tragedy, the Works and Transport Minister, Gen Katumba Wamala, renewed government orders for all passengers on water to wear life jackets.
Dr Oporia said circumstances in which life jacket-wearing passengers die may be a result of the victims wearing the vests incorrectly, where many of them in desperation cling onto and overweigh a vest or where the jacket is of poor material or damaged.
Otherwise, he argued, the bouncy material of the vest should enable a wearer to float on water for fifteen or more hours, a survival that increases chances of being rescuwwed unless the individual succumbs to frigid temperatures or is attacked by animals in water.
“There are different types of life jackets based on different capabilities of the person. For example, if the person cannot swim, he or she is recommended to wear a different type of life jacket from someone that can swim,” Dr Oporia said.
He added that “life jackets are also designed based on different types of water bodies, the weight the jacket can support to keep the person afloat is also very important”.
Mr Richard Kimera, the chairperson of the Association of Fishers and Lake Users of Uganda (AFALU) in Greater Masaka, in a telephone interview yesterday said boat passengers without life jacket epitomise carelessness of the skipper.
“It is upon the [captain] to say that people without life jackets are not using his boat, and people will comply because they want to travel, so that it becomes a new normal that whoever enters a boat must wear a life jacket,” he said.
Using life jacket correctly
• Open the front of the life jacket and pass your arms through the sleeve slots.
• Zip up and fasten all the straps so that the jacket fits the body tightly.
• Ensure the crotch straps are well fastened to hold vest firmly on lower body.
• Use a jacket that matches your weight.
