Heartstart

Following a 3 year joint scheme by the Scottish Ambulance Service and British Heart Foundation, 34 schools across Dumfries and Galloway have each received between £1000 and £4000 of equipment and training for the teachers to deliver the course. The scheme has now ended and the responsibility of training within schools has been taken up by the British Heart Foundation’s Heartstart (Newton Stewart and The Machars) who have, of course, been affiliated to Building Healthy Communities for over 10 years and would not have achieved their success without BHC’s help.

Heartstart (NS) are now responsible for the training of over 4300 people per year in Emergency Life Support. This means that many more lives will be saved in Dumfries and Galloway. The average rate of survival in this country is less than 10%, and in some areas less than 2%. In Denmark, where this is on the curriculum of every school and in towns and cities, you are never more than 50 metres from someone who has been trained, and their survival rate is over 40% and rising.

A simple, free, 2 hour “hands on” course available to groups of 6 to 30 is now available through BHC. Participants have varied from Brownie groups up to GP’s (we currently train at 9 local practices).

The course covers what to do with someone who:

Is unconscious

Has stopped breathing

Is choking

Is bleeding

The course also includes how to recognise when someone is having a heart attack or failure and how to use a Defibrillator

For more details, contact the BHC office on 01988 501111 or David Hirst 01988 700637,       e-mail davidhirsthome@gmail.com