PR Awareness Day – Learn CPR for FREE!
Written by Post Public Information Representative, Oct 17, 2013, Comments Off
Courtesy Xochitl Mora,
The goal of this event is to teach the importance of taking action to prevent heart and stroke complications and save lives. Specifically, increasing the level of awareness of how important it is to act when an emergency occurs. Knowledge of the skills of CPR could save a life.
Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic, which causes the heart to suddenly stop beating. Every year in the United States, emergency medical personnel treat almost 383,000 out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests – that’s more than 1,000 a day. Currently, less than 12 percent of victims survive sudden cardiac arrests. However, there is an easy way to increase the survival rate for victims of sudden cardiac arrest; immediate CPR.
When someone nearby provides effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) immediately after sudden cardiac arrest, a victim’s chance of survival can double or triple, but only 41 percent of cardiac arrest victims get CPR from a bystander.
CPR is not a complicated skill and more people are learning CPR every day. The American Heart Association recommends that CPR training, including hands-on skills practice, be a requirement for graduation from high school. In Texas, House Bill 897 requires that all students receive a basic CPR training before graduating from high school, which is why students from both the United Independent School District and the Laredo Independent School District will participate in both sessions. With a generation of students being trained in CPR, more and more bystanders in our communities will be prepared to save a life. In Laredo as we age and because of the diabetes crisis we face, persons increase their risk of heart and stroke disease. CPR can help.
