Sam Mangoro speaks at the Resuscitation Council Symposium
Sam is a 17 year old who survived his cardiac arrest at school because his school had an AED and his teachers knew how to do CPR. Regular readers of my blog will know that I support the teaching of CPR in schools and like many others was disappointed that the bill to make it compulsory has failed to make it through parliament.
Many schools do train their staff and their students but it’s not all. Evidence from other countries shows clearly the improvement in survival rates when children are taught how to do CPR and to use an AED, this was discussed at a previous Resuscitation Council conference.
Sam and his family have begun the All Heart Campaign and their first aim is to raise £5000 so that they can register as a charity. If you would like to support a campaign to get defibrillators into schools and train staff and pupils, perhaps you are looking for a charity to donate to at Christmas, please consider donating to them. You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook please find them and invite your friends to like them too.
Sam speaks at the Resuscitation Council Symposium
Sam gave an inspirational presentation at the Symposium last week and received a well deserved standing ovation. He spoke eloquently about his story of survival. Many of the audience were deeply moved by his story, some to tears. As a parent I was also struck by the story of his parents’ strength and his mum, Lynda, has written more on her story on their website, which you can read here. However, we know that many people do not survive a cardiac arrest because they do not receive CPR.
There are lots of ways to learn CPR you can attend formal or informal course. There are trainers, such as myself, who will give our time for free to teach children and create a Nation of Lifesavers. I will also run Save a Life parties in my local area and again I don’t charge for my time.
Help for schools
The BHF also runs the Call-Push-Rescue campaign to make kits available to support teachers teaching their students and the government set aside £1 million for the purchase of defibrillators for schools and public places. The BHF have been asked to manage the scheme and so far little of this money has been allocated so they would welcome your requests.
You can read more of the criteria here.
Learn CPR
Please learn CPR, maybe make it your New Year’s resolution? You could start with trying the Lifesaver app. The current record from courses I’ve delivered is 85% of compressions at the correct rate, see if you can beat it.
If you would like help arranging a course please contact me.
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