RIYADH, 10 June 2006 — The Saudi Red Crescent Society will spearhead a national campaign to educate the students on the importance of administering first aid after a random survey revealed that 80 percent of the respondents were unaware of the basics of emergency care.
Saleh Al-Tuwaijri, vice president of the Saudi Red Crescent, said the campaign, which will be held throughout the Kingdom, aims to cover both citizens and residents throughout to educate them on the importance of first aid.
“We conducted a survey recently and found that more than 80 percent of the Saudi respondents need to be educated on how to deal with emergency situations. So we designed the program in line with the findings of the survey targeting all categories of people,” he said.
Al-Tuwaijri said the media has to play an important role in conveying the message to the people. “We produced 13 emergency programs both for the radio and TV covering accidental and medical emergency situations.”
He pointed out that first aid kits would be distributed among the participants in the training program containing simple booklets that cover 13 emergency situations and the appropriate first aid response to each. A CD on emergency situations is being produced for mass distribution.
Al-Tuwaijri said that in the near future “we are going to sign an agreement with the Ministry of Education to create an awareness of first aid among male and female students.”
The participation of the public and private sectors, including major companies, is deemed critical for the success of the program.
“Emergency services have to be provided within a limited time. We try our best to be at the scene early. Our field team rushes to the site to render first aid procedures that can save the lives. There will be new teams accompanying physicians to work on a 24-hour basis,” Mowaffaq Al-Bayouk, general director of emergency services at the Red Crescent headquarters, told Arab News while explaining the organization’s mode of operations.
Al-Bayouk added that the Red Crescent has started deploying the GPS (Global Positioning System) to monitor the movement and location of vehicles, so that the nearest vehicle could be alerted to rush to the emergency scene.
