7 News Belize

The Importance of First Aid For Teachers
posted (May 12, 2015)
Mouth to mouth CPR - used to be the prevailing intervention for those in respiratory distress - but, nowadays, it's not recommended. But there is another version of CPR that doesn't entail any lip or mouth contact: that is the hands on CPR and the educational coordinator from the Belize Emergency Response Team has been visiting primary schools across the city since Thursday showing the teachers this version of CPR. Today we met with Javier Canul at St. Martin De Porres School and he told us how this skill will be useful in dealing with kids.

Javier Canul, Educational Coordinator, BERT
"This last year they decided 'you know what let's do CPR in schools'. It's something that has never been done before and we decided we wanted to talk to the children but then we said 'let's deal with the teachers first'. Why teachers? Because we at BERT do CPR training, advanced first aid training and other training that we do for doctors and nurses but we've never seen a teacher in any of these classes. And we realize that teachers have a core under them. They maintain the students and if the teachers were to teach the students we will have the whole country of Belize being aware of what's going on in terms of first aid and CPR and so we decided this. And Trident Tech came with the students and everybody else so we do at least four schools per day. Which we reach out to, some schools, approximately 45 teachers. So imagine, 45 teachers and each of these teachers go back to their class and give these students the information that they've learnt, I think we'd accomplish our goal. We facilitate the learning process by looking at a video. Hands Only CPR which means that they don't blow into anybody's mouth. And the reason for that is in the past if somebody were to collapse, people who know CPR won't go because they say 'I'm not going to blow in anyone's mouth'. And now the hands on is created whereby if the person collapse you don't have to be blowing in anyone's mouth. You just have to get in there, make sure your scene is safe, shake and shout, see if their breathing, send for help and just start compression. How long are you going to do that for? You're going to do that until professional help arrives."

Ciera Beach, EMT Volunteer, Charleston South Carolina
"The schools are great. The kids are so excited, the teachers are very eager to learn. There are a lot of things here that I feel like we can treat easily. Teachers can treat if they just know a little bit more of what to do. So hopefully we'll help out in the future and people won't be afraid to get in there."

Darcie Ortiz, Teacher
"The session has been so good. Especially to me, it's my first time doing a CPR workshop and I have learnt a lot. I have learnt the steps getting into CPR. So far it has been perfect especially here at school at Saint Martin's, it's something that we as teachers need."

Today was the last day. Some of the schools he visited are St. Luke's Methodist, Holy Redeemer and St. John's Vianney among others.

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