SEVERAL hundred students at Aldworth School learnt life-saving skills today, thanks to a joint effort from a team of emergency services and the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

On Monday 16 October, members of South Central Ambulance Service Foundation Trust (SCAS), Hampshire Constabulary, and Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service (HFRS) went to Aldworth School to teach around 150 Year 10 students CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) as part of European Restart a Heart Day.

SCAS liaison and training officer and registered paramedic Stephen Gooch was in charge of running the event. He said: “The students take to it well and enjoy themselves. There is no age limit that we work on, we teach everyone from as young as three or four to adults.

"As many as 30 per cent of people don’t know what to do in the event of someone having a cardiac arrest, we want to train as many people as we can, and people do remember these skills for life.”

Stephen was also aided by volunteer community first responder Gavin Davies, special constable Julie Capon from Hampshire Constabulary, and fire practitioner Ronnie Stewart. Red watch, a team of firefighters from Basingstoke, also joined in helping to teach the life-saving technique.

Kate Strokosz, student welfare officer at Aldworth School, said: “On Monday 16 October, our Year 10 students had the opportunity to learn life-saving CPR techniques taught by qualified personnel from our emergency services. If someone suffers a cardiac arrest their chances of survival doubles if someone is able to start CPR immediately. Cardiac arrests can happen anywhere, at any time and to anyone.

"This was an amazing opportunity for our students to learn to be life-savers and be part of the ‘Restart a Heart Day’, a Europe-wide campaign which aims teach as many young people as possible the skills to save lives previously lost to cardiac failure- both young and old- all on the same day.”

The latest data published by NHS England shows that SCAS has the best survival rates in the country for patients leaving hospital who have suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

From April 2016-April 2017, the survival rate for patients leaving hospital in SCAS was 11.4 per cent; the England average was 8.5 per cent and in some ambulance trust areas it was as low as 6.5 per cent. If the SCAS survival rate had been achieved by all English ambulance trusts, 925 more people would have survived a cardiac arrest between April 2016 and April 2017.

It is estimated that 3,500 students across the county were taught how to carry out CPR on the day.