The European Resuscitation Council will be marking the first European Restart A Heart Day today. The aim is to raise awareness among the public on the importance of learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to help restart the heart of a victim in cardiac arrest. This project is aimed mainly towards the younger European generation and, thus, help to improve the recognised low number of people surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
On June 14, 2012, the European Parliament issued a declaration, signed by 395 MEPs, including the Maltese members, calling on the Commission and the ERC to encourage: the adoption of common programmes for implementing automated external defibrillators (AED) in public places and training lay people in all member states; the adjustment of legislation in order to facilitate CPR and defibrillation by non medical persons and systematic data collection for feedback and quality management in every programme.
Statistics indicate that fewer than one in 10 people survive cardiac arrest. With figures of about 350,000 people suffering out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, the figures of non survivability from cardiac arrest are equivalent to over 1,000 persons a day or two full aeroplanes crashing every day for a whole year with no survivors.
These are certainly shocking figures but the truth is that although those dying in road traffic accidents in Europe amount to only about a tenth of those succumbing to cardiac arrest, government spending on road and car safety is much higher than money budgeted towards emergency response management of cardiac arrest victims.
We know that bystander CPR will increase survival by two to three times. Thus, this ERC public cardiac awareness campaign, thorough the support of the member resuscitation councils, including the Maltese Resuscitation Council, may save up to 100,000 lives in Europe every year.
Bystander CPR will increase survival by two to three times
According to the chairwoman of the ERC, Maaret Castren, if CPR training is ensured in key public places, such as airports, hotels, supermarkets and sports ground facilities, with the backing of an AED being kept in these strategic locations, 50 per cent of the cardiac arrest deaths can be effectively prevented.
Today, the ERC will be hosting a training event within the European Parliament in Brussels whereby MEPs will be shown how to carry out CPR of a cardiac arrest victim and also how to use the AED. The MRC will be participating in this event.
As the national resuscitation council, the MRC believes that similar CPR teaching should be aimed at teachers, parents and opinion leaders but the most important cohort to teach are our own children as this will ensure that tomorrow’s generation will have a better chance of survival when cardiac arrest happens.
Schoolchildren, especially between the ages of 12 and 16, are more easily motivated to learn these life-saving skills. They are also more able to retain these skills for longer periods of time. It is with this viewpoint in mind that there is no better place to teach these skills than through the national education system by introducing CPR training in the national school curriculum.
Investing in the country’s young people will eventually reap a rich harvest as they will remain life savers for a much longer time than us more mature adults.
The financial input in carrying out such a national project will be minimal but the gain in the number of lives saved priceless!
The motto taken up by the ERC for the Restart A Heart campaign is: by performing CPR you can do nothing wrong, the only thing that can be wrong is doing nothing.
So go ahead… take up the training challenge and save a life.
Jonathan Joslin is chairman of the Malta Resuscitation Council.