Parents In Yorkshire Urged To Learn Baby CPR
Three quarters of parents here say they wouldn't know what to do if their young child stopped breathing.
Only a quarter of parents in Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire would know what to do if their baby stopped breathing.
That's according to new figures released by first aid charity, St John Ambulance.
They've now launched a campaign to get more mums and dads learning life-saving CPR and will soon begin delivering infant first aid courses across our region.
The sessions begin in Hull on 27 Januray, Cleethorpes on 29 January and York on 19 February.
Kimberley Travis from Hull says her young son stopped breathing once and she didn't know what to do. She thinks all parents should learn infant first aid and told us:
"I had come in as his dad was looking after him and he just went blue and fell to a side and I just panicked. My Auntie was nextdoor and she is a nurse and told me to ring an ambulancw. I think because it was a member of the family we all just panicked and didn't know what to do.
"You hope that it's never going to happen to your child but it did happen to mine and I would do first aid because I have still got a toddler so I still need it and my kids still need me."
Seven out of ten Mums and Dads in the region said this first aid emergency scared them the most. While two-thirds said they had learnt first aid - only one in four knew how to treat babies. CPR for babies is different from adult CPR, in that only two fingers should be used to give pumps to the baby’s chest and its nose and mouth must be covered by the rescuer’s mouth to give life saving puffs. St John Ambulance regional director, Simon Dunn, said:
“We’ve listened to parents and we know that they want to learn first aid skills in a way that’s easy and memorable. That’s what inspired the creation of Nursery Rhymes Inc. “We know that a major barrier to parents learning is that baby CPR frightens them, so we’ve removed the fear factor and made it as reassuring as possible by making this new video and putting on a set of courses. “As well as learning the technique themselves, we’re asking everyone to share the video so that all parents, grandparents and carers know what to do in those crucial minutes after a baby has stopped breathing.”
As part of the charity's new campaign - they've released a video showing how to resucitate a young child. You can watch it below: