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St John’s offering free life-saving first aid training in Banbury
03/09/2024
The public can learn the essential skills in Spiceball Park this Saturday
Free life-saving first aid training is available to people in Banbury this Saturday.
The sessions are part of a national drive by volunteers from St John Ambulance to teach 50,000 people in England vital first aid skills during September.
The Save a Life campaign comes as new research by Censuswide for St John Ambulance showed that only four in 10 (43%) people would know how to do CPR to save someone in cardiac arrest. Just under a third (32%) would know how to use a defibrillator.
The research also found that fewer than half of the population (44%) know how to give basic back blows to someone choking, whilst fewer than four in 10 (38%) people said they would know how to treat a serious bleed from an injury or wound.
More than a quarter of those surveyed (26%) said they had never learned any first aid. The top three first aid skills they would like to learn were CPR, choking and severe bleeds.
The Banbury St John’s team will teach techniques in these areas and give away free first aid pocket guides on Saturday.
Head of community education, Carl Makins, said: “This September we plan to show thousands of members of the public how to save lives, focusing on the first aid that they most want to learn. Tragically, due to the rise in knife crime, it feels particularly relevant to be teaching people how to treat severe blood loss.
“It’s vital more of us within our communities know how to respond to the life-threatening situations which many of us will sadly face in our lives.
“There are nearly 300 deaths a year due to choking, yet more than half of us don’t know how to give back blows to clear someone’s airway. We also know that giving CPR and using a defibrillator can more than double someone’s chance of survival. It’s so often those quick actions taken by people who find themselves first on scene in the critical minutes before an ambulance arrives, that make the difference between life and death.”
The training is available in Spiceball Country Park, between 9.30am and 3.30pm.
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam