School children to be trained in life saving skills

School children across Northern Ireland are to be trained to carry out life saving skills on heart attack victims as part of a major new initiative launched at Queen's University today.

The unique ABC for Life programme was developed by a group of medical students at Queen's, who were keen to teach basic life support skills to school children.

Explaining how the initiative will work, Dr David McCluskey, Head of Medicine and Therapeutics at Queen's, said a group of 60 medical students will instruct a teacher from each of the primary schools in Northern Ireland who will then pass on this knowledge and expertise to the children in their area.

"It is a unique scheme because it will educate an entire generation of primary 7 children in one region of the United Kingdom,” Dr McCluskey said. "Already over one third of the primary schools in Northern Ireland have enrolled in the scheme and it is hoped that if all of the schools participate up to 25,000 children each year would have the opportunity to learn these life saving skills.”

Northern Ireland has the highest incidence of heart disease in the world with around 8,000 people suffering a heart attack each year resulting in 3,000 deaths.

The scheme, the first of its type in the UK, will teach 10 and 11-year-olds how to carry out mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage in a bid to save lives.

It is now hoped that up to 25,000 year 7 pupils will be trained each year in the Province.

(MB/SP)