LETTER: Teach all young people First Aid

These are the skills needed to help save a life. Too many of us would not know how to help someone having a cardiac arrest, choking or bleeding, or having an asthma attack or seizure.

Around threequarters of people wouldn’t feel confident performing CPR on a loved one despite 80 per cent of out of hospital cardiac arrests happening in the home. The consequences of this can often be devastating - less than one in ten people survive an out of hospital cardiac arrest.

But in places where CPR is taught at school, survival rates more than double compared to those schools in the UK that do not teach this vital subject that have been recorded.

That’s why I’m calling for Jeremy Quin to back the Emergency First Aid Education Bill to make sure that all pupils across Horsham are given the skills that could save a life.

I have been a member of my local Horsham St John Ambulance unit for over seven years. In this time I have completed over 300 hours of public service for events both in my local community and some further afield such as Brighton.

I feel deeply that First Aid is a life skill and would help young people become confident as a person and indeed potentionally save a life. As this subject is not currently part of the national curriculum there is no obligation for schools to teach this subject as part of PSHE.

However it is actively encouraged, which is good, it does give schools the option not to teach this vital subject which means that children may not even be taught this vital life skill and could be the difference between life and death in our local community.

There are people in the UK who die needlessly due to lack of basic First Aid knowledge which should be taught in schools as a matter of normality - the current view of the government, and indeed our local MP, should be changed.

I would be very grateful if you could support this important and worthy cause and publish this letter to try and convince Jeremy Quin to vote in favour of this Bill in the House of Commons on November 20.

STUART CUTLER

The Birches, Mannings Heath

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