AIIMS Delhi has announced plans to train all its staff, including doctors, paramedics, security guards and sanitation workers, with the emergency life-saving procedure called Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) to counter the rising number of heart attack cases. “New people who will be joining in future will also be trained and the duration of the course will be four hours for a layperson, 1-day training for paramedics and 2-day training for doctors,” said Dr Reema Dada, spokesperson of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Delhi (AIIMS Delhi). CPR are chest compressions that keep the blood flowing to essential organs even when the heart is not working properly. It is an important procedure performed when the heart stops beating. Immediate CPR can double or triple chances of survival after cardiac arrest. The institute has signed an agreement with the Indian Resuscitation Council Federation (IRCF) that will be imparting the training. A senior AIIMS doctor said the institute has become Comprehensive Resuscitation Training Centre (CRTC) of IRCF and it will train and certify its doctors, paramedical staff and employees with made-in-India CPR courses for cardiac arrest treatment. “These courses have been developed with experts from across the country and are made considering our cultural and socioeconomic background. This initiative is aimed at spreading lifesaving skills widely so as to benefit our countrymen,” he added. In October last year, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya had advised those who had suffered from severe Covid-19 infections not to exert themselves too much while doing exercise and stay away from hard labour for some time to prevent heart attacks. “The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has done a detailed study recently. That detailed study has recommended that those who had severe Covid should desist from extra labour; that they should stay away from continuous labour, laborious running, exercise, etc., for a specified short period, meaning a year or two, so that heart attacks can be prevented,” Mandaviya had said.
