Timely aid saves a life

In today`s world, anything can happen to anyone –age no bar. In situations of emergency, like a heart attack, or an accident if help is provided within the first 60 minutes, considered the golden hour, a life can be saved. This is what happened to a good friend and a popular walker Sridhar on the beach Road in Besant Nagar(Bessy) recently. Thanks to the immediate attention he got from Kala Balasundaram, another walker on the beach road who fortunately happened to be the founder of ALERT, an NGO which is  a first responder`s network in case of an emergency. Kala is the wife of Balasundaram , a member of my Rotary club who is also a regular walker on Bessy.

 

On 9^th August, early in the morning, Kala was running on the beach road towards Thalapakatti restaurant with a friend  Hubert, who was about 200 meters behind her doing a slow jog. Past Cozee restaurant, she saw a small group standing around a man in his late  60s who had collapsed and was totally unconscious. Another walker was holding his head. There was blood on the road as he had hurt his head. Herself a trained first responder of ALERT, Kala got into action and stopped a walker from giving water. She put him in a recovery position as he still had a pulse. Thankfully, the ambulance parked nearby reached in time and the paramedic started giving CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resusitation) after checking his pulse with an oxymeter. When he asked if anyone else could administer CPR, Kala offered to help. Meanwhile, the victim`s wife who was also walking with her friends came to see what had happened and was shocked to see that it was her husband. She panicked and called her son staying in the nearby Kalakshetra colony. 

 

Kala could see the victim beginning to gasp for breath as he was being given CPR. She asked her friend Hubert to take over CPR, while she went to hold up the victim`s chin and head to free up his airway. Fortunately, the paramedic had an AED (Defibrillator)which he got from the van and started connecting it to the chest. He also got the ambubag used for pumping oxygen to the lungs. The group managed to carefully lift the victim and place him on the stretcher and then onto the ambulance.  Inside the ambulance, the paramedic connected the oxygen to him. Within a few minutes, the ambulance was on its way to the nearest hospital with Sridhar and his family.

 

After giving the staff and family very anxious moments for nearly a week, Sridhar has fully recovered from a near-death situation and is out of the ICU and expected back home in  a few days. As the doctors in the hospital commented,  "But for the timely aid provided by the good samaritans in the beach and the paramedic it would have been difficult to save the life of Sridhar"

 

A few words about ALERT. It was started sixteen years ago by Kala with just two volunteers. It now has 2000+ registered volunteers with over 50 active volunteers. So far ALERT has trained over 2,50,000 people in First Aid, and has scaled over to 21 out of 28 states, and 4 out of 8 union territories in India.  It has a complete simulation lab, the only one of its kind outside a medical college in India, meant for the common man.  ALERT  volunteers have attended to over 1000 accident victims as the first respondents. Alert is currently active in Chennai, Bangalore, Puduchery, and Coimbatore. As per the direction given by Late Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the people`s President, ALERT  concentrates on training volunteers – at least one person from every family in emergency care.

Apart from the availability of  ALERT volunteers in Kala and her friend, it was fortunate that Sridhar`s wife was nearby to identify him. Very often we come across accident victims carrying no identity cards on their person. This leads to their family, unaware of the accident,  running from pillar to post to locate their missing family member. It is for this reason I have been advocating the need for everyone (age no bar) to carry an identity card ( not just Aadhar).  This card, part from giving the name and address of the victim should also carry contact details of the victim`s near and dear ones on the reverse of the card who can be contacted in case of an emergency.

 

It is heartening to learn that ALERT is planning to have a big camp in Chennai to create awareness among the public about both these issues on the World First Aid Day in September this year. Kudos to Kala  and her team for the yeomen service they are providing to the society.