If a colleague fainted, a child choked on a piece of candy or a relative had a stroke, would you be able to cope, asks Hanan Radwan, completing the Egyptian Red Crescent's first-aid course My sinews were aching, and I had started to sweat. But I had to keep pushing my knotted palms down on the body sprawling on the ground before me. Working almost like a sledgehammer, I pushed on the chest and then released 30 times. I gave the body two strong puffs of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, before repeating the cycle five times. My efforts, however, were not effective. I was performing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation on the dummy of an adult in the training hall of the Egyptian Red Crescent (ERC) Society. It was early afternoon, the first of a three-day workshop on first aid. After several tries, a monitor tied to the dummy finally blinked green, indicating that I was pushing and blowing at the right pressure. Then, the rest of the working group and I moved on to perform the same operation on the dummy of an infant and afterwards that of a child. Most of my co-participants hailed from Cairo Airport, while others were employees at a five- star hotel. All of them had been obliged to take the course, but they were no less enthusiastic than I. Small wonder, given the importance of first-aid skills to daily life. "I have seen so many cases where ignorance of the basics of first aid could have cost the life of a person, or caused him or her to become disabled," said Ahmed Fathi, a doctor and first-aid instructor. "I'll never forget the case of a three-year-old girl who was left to suffer from diarrhoea and was not given fluids. She not only lost the salts and minerals in her body, but also important blood cells. This caused a clot to form in one of her legs, which sadly then had to be amputated." Indeed, as I discovered in the course simple acts like tilting the head of an unconscious person backwards can save his or her life by preventing the tongue, which relaxes and flips backwards, from blocking the airway to the lungs and causing asphyxiation. On the other hand, tilting the head backwards of a person suffering from a nose bleed can cause blood clots to form in the nasal passageways, leading to complications. Misconceptions about the correct first-aid measures to be adopted can cause more harm than good. For instance, a person suffering from a heart attack should never be moved, sprayed with water on the face, or given fluids to drink. "I was very sad once after I had given this information in the course to find a participant commenting that he had made exactly these mistakes when his father had a stroke, contributing to his death," recalls Amr Imam, a pharmacist and first-aid instructor. With information like this coming through lectures, videos and other visual aids, half of the training day slips by, leaving us thirsty for more life-saving tips. Each day ends with a practical session that allows participants to put knowledge gained to good use. At the end of each day, some of us read the first-aid manual distributed as course material. Others, like Hisham Kamel, relayed the day's information to family members. As head of operational health and safety at Cairo Airport, Kamel is taking the course especially seriously. "Workers at the airport are subject to all kinds of injuries, and I have seen many serious ones," he said. "Before, I used to do what I could with the knowledge I had, but now I know better." Even those working in the medical profession may find themselves impressed by the information given at the course. One such is Mervat Ibrahim, a nurse working in the delivery room of a Cairo maternity hospital. "Sometimes I find myself in crisis situations in the operating room that force me to act quickly," she said. "Now I know what to do with a new-born infant that is choking on blood or plasma." A common misconception held by many is that doctors are necessarily particularly adept at first aid. As Imam points out, this assumption may be false. "In order to tend to a patient in a hospital, a doctor will have all the necessary equipment, medication and staff at his disposal. But if he's out on the street and encounters the same kind of case, he may not know what to do or how to do it without such tools," he said. However, just as doctors should not always be considered as first-aid experts, another common temptation that should be resisted is to assume that we are all as good as doctors in a crisis situation. In fact, the task of a first-aid rescuer should not go beyond providing quick care to the patient until an ambulance team or doctors can take over. This is a fact sometimes ignored by the Egyptian layman. "Egyptians by nature are very helpful, but their eagerness in times of crisis can sometimes harm the victim. Merely crowding round an injured person and disagreeing over how best to handle him can cause that person to suffocate or get worse," said Imam. He recalls one difficult moment on the Cairo- Alexandria Road when passers-by insisted on moving a man suffering from convulsions from the centre to the side of the road, refraining from doing so only after he had managed to warn them that this was likely to do more harm than good. Adherence to age-old practices -- many of which have proven either wrong or ineffective -- is another factor behind first-aid blunders. Grandmother's advice to drink salt water to induce vomiting to treat certain conditions can lead to irritation of the intestine and larynx, for example. Also, smothering an open wound with coffee powder causes some particles to become embedded in the injured tissue, requiring surgical intervention. If only for such reasons, first-aid courses like this one are invaluable. With the proliferation of road accidents and increasing awareness of the importance of first-aid skills, the number of first-aid workshops provided by the ERC has gone up from 12 in 2000 to more than 200 last year. According to Mohamed Mohi, head of the ERC's training department, main participants include factory and hotel employees, with housewives, drivers, embassy staff and independent enthusiasts like myself following suit. After a gruelling three-day programme and tough exam, the majority of us were awarded a certificate that is valid for two years. Nevertheless, I for one still harboured misgivings about my ability to act properly and apply what I had learned in a crisis situation. Imam's advice: "you need to be confident that you can now handle an accident with better knowledge than before taking this course. You may hesitate at first, but when you realise that a simple technique can save someone's life, your fear will vanish." I am bracing myself for that moment.
