Ireland’s contribution to improve first aid response

In August and September 2015, over 150 staff members of the Irish Embassy and British High Commission benefited from three days’ training on CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) in Freetown, Sierra Leone to become First Aid responders.

The training, designed by the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council of Ireland, was voluntarily delivered by medical staff from the Irish Defence Forces deployed to support the Ebola fight in Sierra Leone. A defibrillator and two training devices were kindly donated to the Irish Embassy by the Centre for Emergency Medical Science at University College Dublin.

The Irish medics equipped the staff of the two institutions, mostly national staff, with skills on how to respond to heart failure, wounds and bleeding, and loss of consciousness among others. Sierra Leone is known to have limited capacity to respond to health emergencies, which makes such training so valuable as it contributes to increase life-saving interventions in the country. Participants were very enthusiastic during the training sessions as they realised how useful the newly acquired skills could be in order to administer first aid support to their families and neighbours. One of the participants, Fatmata Kamara said, ‘’Most of the deaths in Sierra Leone are heart related, but we do not have the skills to respond quickly and by the time we manage to see a doctor, the person is already dead. I hope that such trainings are institutionalised to benefit the majority’’.

Certificates of participation were presented to the First Aid responders at the closing ceremony, held on the 14th September 2015, at the offices of the Irish Embassy in Freetown - in the presence of the Irish Ambassador and the British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone. The two diplomats expressed happiness to see the continued collaboration between their two countries, for the benefit of Sierra Leone.

Master trainer, Sgt Martin Moules of the Irish Defence Forces and Cpl Samuel Kamara, a Sierra Leonean-born member of the British Army, collaborated to translate the CPR training video into Sierra Leone’s national language, Krio. The translated video, which will be available at the offices of the institutions in Freetown, makes the training accessible to all Sierra Leoneans, and allows the first aid responder skills to be refreshed and cascaded as and when necessary.