The Lanzarote Health Area, attached to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, trained a total of 5,485 people over eight years of age in basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid techniques during the past year 2022.
The training instructor of the Health Area, Benjamín Nieves, in collaboration with the Security and Emergency Consortium of the island, has developed dozens of workshops throughout the past year aimed at students, neighborhood associations, sports clubs, non-governmental organizations and security forces. The ultimate goal of these courses is to train and enable the participating people in the application of first aid to an injured person until the arrival of emergency services.
This training initiative has been developed for years and includes various workshops such as Learn to save a life, SOS breathe and Action in the event of choking. The workshop Gain time, gain life: everyone against stroke or PAS behavior protect, alert and help is also taught, which is included in first aid training.
On the other hand, workshops have been held on the use of defibrillators and basic life support techniques. In addition, during the summer season, several courses were held in coastal and beach areas focused on the prevention of accidents in the aquatic environment.
Among the objectives of the program are to inform about the chain of survival, alert emergency services, identify the loss of consciousness, the absence of breathing, the obstruction of the upper airway and cardiorespiratory arrest, apply the necessary techniques in this last case and know the rules for the prevention of sudden death.
With this theoretical and practical training, the participating people are instructed on how to save lives, since the development of teaching in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid, especially in schoolchildren, has positive pedagogical connotations that include the active participation of the student, the increase of their motivation, an increase in learning in knowledge and skills, the awareness of healthy life attitudes and help to emotionally assimilate emergency situations.
Quick and appropriate responses
On the other hand, the workshops emphasize the importance of citizens having access to the appropriate techniques and tools that allow them to face an emergency situation, procedures that in a critical moment allow to save the life of a person as is the case of the use of defibrillators. Therefore, members of sports clubs and members of the security forces and bodies, as well as members of non-governmental organizations, are trained.
It is about extending the idea that increasing the survival of cardiac arrest is possible and that all people can face such a situation at any time, if they know how to properly perform an external cardiac massage, chest compressions or artificial respiration.
The director of the Lanzarote Health Area, Noelia Umpiérrez, assures that the training activity and education in first aid is fundamental for the community and provides tools to act in the event that a person suffers a stop or choking. She also positively values the participation in the workshops, whose figures are close to those registered in the years prior to the pandemic.
