Mirian Gom 
ABUJA, Nigeria — Teaching young people Basic Life Support (BLS) skills can help reduce preventable deaths from sudden cardiac emergencies, a cardiologist at the National Hospital Abuja, Dr Oladipupo Fasan, has said.
Fasan, Head of Cardiology at the hospital, spoke on Friday in Abuja during a BLS and emergency resuscitation training organised by The City Club Abuja (TCCA) for students at Government Science Technical College, Garki.
He said the programme was designed to equip students with basic emergency skills that could help unconscious people before medical professionals arrive or victims reach hospital.
“As we all know, we are here today to educate young ones about life support; what we call basic life support,” Fasan said.
He said the initiative was prompted by concerns over cardiovascular disease and sudden deaths, popularly described in Nigeria as “fall and die”.
“We thought, how better can we educate the society? We agreed that if we start with the young ones and educate them, they will grow and become educated adults,” he said.
Fasan said trained students could pass the knowledge to their classmates, parents and siblings, extending the impact beyond those who participated directly in the programme.
“Most cardiac arrests happen outside the hospital and the way things are in Nigeria now, we are not there yet,” he said.
Fasan also noted that Nigeria had yet to achieve widespread availability of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in public places.
TCCA Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Deji Adetuberu, said the training sought to address the limited basic emergency response skills among members of the public.
“One child you are educating here will transmit that value chain to like nine other people at the minimum,” Adetuberu said.
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