Kasturba Medical College Hospital conducts First Aid Care Awareness programme for Children
The term first aid means, “Help given to a sick or injured person until full medical treatment is available”. The components of first aid include to preserve life, to prevent further harm and to promote recovery. First aid is simple and life-saving. Many lives are saved through first aid given before the emergency services arrive.
Mangaluru: The Department of Emergency Medicine, Paediatrics and Community Medicine, Kasturba Hospitals and Medical college took up the venture of conducting a first aid care awareness programme mainly focusing on the pre-hospital care.
There was a demonstration of common real-life situations of fainting/syncope, choking episodes, eye injuries, bleeding from the nose, care of burns and bleeding wounds, immobilization and splinting of fractures. Proper hand-washing techniques and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) was also stressed upon. Role plays and one on one interaction with the children demonstrating hands-on first aid care for the scenarios was conducted. The importance of staying calm, scene safety measures, adopting recovery position and call for help was also reinforced.
The programme was conducted for 130 children (age group: 6 to 12 years) of Early Learning Centre, Bejai Kapikad, who supported us in this venture. We hope that repeated reinforcements of first aid care among this population will definitely give a positive impact on healthcare in India.
Dr Anand Venugopal, Medical Superintendent, KMC Hospitals Mangaluru said, “Many a time, at the site of incident, the public gather around to witness the incident and spend more time on taking photos/selfies or videos of the situation instead of attending to the victim by providing basic medical facilities before shifting the victim to the hospital centre for further management”.
Thus, we are targeting the budding youth population, to make them realize the need and importance of first aid care.
