Thousands of people are coming together today to increase awareness for cardiac arrests, where the public will be shown how to perform lifesaving CPR.
Volunteers from around the Yorkshire area all join together and go into school’s to teach the skill CPR. This year marks the 10th year of this campaign for the Yorkshire Ambulance Service where they will be going into 165 school’s with the hope to teach 35,000 children. This brings this to a total of about a quarter of a million which have been taught since the campaign began in 2013.
Volunteer Coordinator Helen Smith said: “It’s just an amazing achievement, we have people coming back into school’s this year who were taught this skill at their own school when they were younger and they just want to give something back. Sadly, we’ve had instances where people have had to use the skill that they’ve been taught.” She went onto say “What we’re trying to say to children is that, hopefully we’ll never need to use this but if you do, it’s having the confidence to give it a go, it’s just really important. If it’s just one life that can be saved it’s worth it.”
In the UK, according to Yorkshire Ambulance Service, less that 1 in 10 people survive a cardiac arrest, but if the UK is to achieve the same survival rate as Norway, where 25% of people survive, an additional 100 lives could be saved each week.
Luis Munro, 20, nearly lost his Grandad after his heart stopped beating but a staff member at the restaurant they were in was trained in CPR and as a result saved his life. Munro said “if no one in the restaurant new how to do chest compressions, I don’t know if my Grandad would be alive today.”
Yorkshire Ambulance Service’s website stated that over 30,000 people suffer from a cardiac arrest outside of hospitals every year. If it is to happen in front of a of a bystander who starts CPR immediately before the arrival of an ambulance, the person’s chance of survival double.
