Hyderabad: When basic training helped in saving lives at home

HYDERABAD: While it is no secret that first aid can be a life saver, some trained parents have been able to save their loved ones during the pandemic.
In one case, a woman who had learnt the basic first aid (which includes management of high fever, serious wounds, responding to choking, cardiac arrest etc) was able to perform CPR (cardio pulmonary resuscitation) at home, when her husband collapsed.
In other cases, the skill has been helpful for parents during the trying pandemic times, when getting a hospital consultation or bed was a challenge. “My 6-year-old son had developed high fever nearly a year ago. Since it was in the middle of the pandemic, I was not ready to take him to the hospital. I looked for some YouTube videos on this by doctors and was able to manage without panicking. I kept doing continuous sponge bath and waited for 2-3 hours to check the temperature. Without having known this, I would have checked every 15 minutes and rushed to a hospital in panic,” said Triveni Bonthu, a software engineer, who is now planning to attend a workshop for proper training.
“Knowing basic first aid has been particularly helpful to me when by 36-month old baby was choking sometime back. I was with my mother and grandmother and both suggested that I give water to the child to clear out the piece of watermelon that was stuck but having been trained in first aid I knew the right thing to do is let the baby cough it out or put then in specific position and pat their back till the congestion is cleared,” said Shraddha Thakar, from the city.