‘Restart a Heart Day’ puts focus on CPR

Health and emergency authorities in Gibraltar yesterday highlighted ‘Restart a Heart Day’, an international initiative set up to increase the number of people able to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the community.

CPR is a time-critical intervention. The sooner it is started after cardiac arrest, the more likely that person is to survive.

Outside of a hospital environment, it is family, friends, colleagues and strangers that will make the difference by calling 190 and starting CPR quickly when someone is unresponsive and has stopped breathing.

The Telephone-CPR initiative has meant that more bystander CPR is being performed in Gibraltar.

However, the message yesterday was that it is always better to know what to do in an emergency before you need to do it.

The GHA, GFRS, GAS and Gibraltar Cardiac Association are joining forces to ask members of the community to access the Resuscitation Council UK on https://www.resus.org.uk/publicresource and British Heart Foundation on https://www.bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-tosave-a-life/how-to-do-cpr to learn CPR.

The Minister for Health, Samantha Sacramento, said: “I’d like to thank everyone involved for their work on this initiative locally.”

“Cardiac arrest still occurs in the community, and by learning and performing CPR, you could be the positive difference in a lifesaving situation.”

“We are asking the community to take this opportunity to learn CPR to assist someone in a cardiac arrest. Encourage your friends and family to do the same. Please do it for someone you love. Please do it today.”