A hands-on training session for police personnel, lorry drivers and auto drivers on chest compressions, bleeding control, safe extrication and the correct handling of accident victims. These groups are almost always first on the scene of a highway crash.
On the highways around Anantapur, the first people to reach a road accident are almost never medical staff. They are police on patrol, lorry and auto drivers, and passers-by. What those first responders do in the first ten minutes has a large effect on whether the patient survives and on whether a spinal injury becomes a permanent paralysis.
The training covered chest compressions practised on manikins, control of external bleeding with direct pressure, the recovery position for an unconscious patient who is breathing, and how to keep the head, neck and spine aligned while moving an injured person.
A significant part of the session addressed the common and well-intentioned mistakes: pulling a patient out of a vehicle by the arms, seating a head-injured patient upright in an auto, giving water to an unconscious person, and removing a helmet incorrectly. Each of these was demonstrated and corrected.
Participants also worked through what information to give when calling 108 — exact location and landmark, number of casualties, whether anyone is unconscious or trapped, and whether there is heavy bleeding — since a precise call shortens the ambulance's response time considerably.
Police units, transport operators and driver associations can request a session for their personnel through /contact-us.