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.

Published 20th Jan 2016

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 January, Cleethorpes on 29 January and York on 19 February.

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: