First aid

By Abubakar A Gummi.

Accidents happen in daily activities – in house halls, schools, offices, markets, or on the roads. A woman cuts her hand while cutting an onion. A boy falls from the wall or on a bicycle and faints or breaks his leg. Motorcycles and cars crash every day. Many people die in a fire outbreak. Lives may be lost not because of these accidents but lack of knowledge of what to do at the moment of occurrence or before taking the victim to the hospital.

Many situations may require emergency treatment to save lives. A hospital may be located far. Fire service may not be available. Road safety may be far from the place of the event. As a result, victims suffer a lot. If it is an accident, he may lose much blood, resulting in death before taking him to the hospital. Hence, individuals need to be trained to rescue minor or serious ills or injuries.

An attempt has been made to reduce the number of mortality, hence introducing a new topic in basic science and essential technology in our primary and secondary schools; first aid. First aid is emergency assistance given to an ill or injured person before taking him to the hospital.

This was a good move because educating a child is like educating the whole society. As it was said, “teaching a child is like writing on a rock; it will never wash away”. Unfortunately, the topic mainly focused on what first aid is, the type of first aid, and why the need to know about first aid, not how to perform the first aid.

In recent years, new inventions have been made, more types of machinery increased, vehicles and more factories have been constructed, and people have turned to using gas stoves, Electric stoves and heaters. More and more electrical appliances are used .hence the chance of increased accidences and incidences.

Therefore, there is a need to explain more on the topic and expand it to subjects in particular in our various schools. There is a need to teach them the following:

-What is first aid.

-Importance of first aid 

-Types of first aid

-First-aid Kit

-Travelling requirements

-What to keep at home for the need of first aid

-What to keep in our offices

-What to keep in our schools

-Precaution to stay away from Hazard 

-How to prevent hazard

-First aid for CPR

-First aid for a person choking

-First aid for a medication or drug overdose.

-Reducing the risk of infected wounds during first aid 

-Using a bandage during first aid

-Making an arm slip

-First aid during flooding

-How to return home safely after flooding

-Abdominal pain in adult 

-Abdominal pain in children

– How to respond to Hazard

-How to treat yourself when hot water burns you. 

-how to call for rescue.

And many more.

All these mentioned above can only be treated as a topic in detail with practicality. There is a need to focus more on it because more lives are lost every day, not because of the hazard but not knowing what to do.

Before government turn to this, there is a need for people in our society to learn more about first aid and enlighten others.

In today’s digital era, there are many ways to learn. There are free online courses, and there is 

Google and there are YouTube channels.

You can teach thousands of people through social media by sharing your ideas. It is not necessary that you must have an organisation. You can decide on your own to go to any school in your community and request permission to use one period to enlighten students. You can share in mosque one or two tips every day.

Our youths need to understand that no matter how little it is, their contribution is significant to society.

NGOs are doing their best to enlighten and give a day workshop to students or organise a few days of training to equip people on first aid. But people are also needed to contribute more.

Abubakar A Gummi wrote from Zamfara state via abubakargummi06@gmail.com.