2024-03-28 12:00:12
Cardiac arrest is responsible for 50,000 deaths per year in France. The survival rate remains less than 10%. Professor of cardiology Eloi Marijon recalled in August 2023, in the columns of Mondethat the number of sudden deaths remained “desperately stable” for ten years. How can we accept that successive governments have still not taken stock of this public health problem? Why not have deployed awareness campaigns with a real training policy from middle school? Why not give a more important place to “citizen rescuers”, these volunteers who can, more quickly than medical emergency services, take the first steps and use defibrillators? How can departmental elected officials brush aside requests for subsidies? With 300,000 volunteers mobilized, 20,000 interventions in 2023 and thousands of victims saved thanks to its Staying Alive application, the Le Bon Samaritain association today wishes to alert the government to this form of indigence.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The survival rate following cardiac arrest might be much better if first aid procedures were known to everyone
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If major progress has been made in the medical treatment of the causes of cardiac arrest, it is the first minutes based on the first witness(es) which are decisive. They explain the lack of improvement in the outcome of cardiac arrest. In its 2018 report, the National Academy of Medicine recalls that “The first minutes of treatment are crucial. A more systematic initial adapted resuscitation by the witness […] should make it possible to achieve higher survival rates ». Since 2007, a decree has authorized the use of the defibrillator by any person regardless of their age. However, no awareness campaign has been organized to explain to the French the usefulness and safety of these devices, even though they are omnipresent in public spaces. In 2018, an interministerial health committee planned measures to train 80% of the population in first aid during the five-year term. Although progress has been made, the goal is far from being achieved six years later.
Faced with this observation, the Le Bon Samaritain association has been mobilizing volunteers since 2016 to perform the first actions on the victims while waiting for help to arrive. The principle is simple: a platform is made available to firefighters and SAMU allowing them to locate and mobilize volunteers. The latter, recognized as “citizen rescuers” since 2020, are identified using Staying Alive, a free application downloaded by more than 2 million users. A study carried out with the Paris fire brigade demonstrated that the intervention of a citizen rescuer made it possible to double the survival rate of victims of cardiac arrest. It is the time taken to arrive on site that makes all the difference between the first witness and the first doctor. Just last December, the rescue of a 3-month-old baby by a Staying Alive volunteer made the headlines.
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