Charity aiming to create a '˜nation of lifesavers' visits Burgess Hill

Little Life Savers, which delivers basic life support skills throughout West Sussex, pitched up at the Market Place Shopping Centre to catch shoppers passing by as part of World Restart a Heart Day – a worldwide initiative.

Claire Huggett, West Sussex coordinator, said: “This is an annual initiative which aims to train as many people as possible in CPR in one day, so that more people know these life saving skills.

“At present if you suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK you have less than a one in ten chance of surviving. We want to change that.

“The evidence for bystander CPR making a real difference to survival in cardiac arrest is very strong.

“Little Life Savers is a charity that was set up as we believe that all children should have the opportunity to learn these skills which empowers them to act positively should they ever need to, thereby aiming to create a ‘nation of lifesavers’.

“In fact several children that we have taught have had to use their newly acquired skills, mainly helping other children who were choking, since we taught them.

“We are made up of mainly doctors, nurses and other health care professionals and provide schools and clubs these sessions for free for children over the age of nine.”

Shoppers were given the opportunity to have a go on resuscitation mannequins in the shopping centre.

Dr Barbara Stanley, founder and chairman of the charity, was on hand. She said: “We go into schools to teach schoolchildren the very basic skills of CPR and how to manage a choking child for free. All our sessions are free and we concentrate on children aged nine and over, all the way up to 18.”

Little Life Savers was established as a charity in September 2016.

During the first six months it delivered basic life support skills training throughout West Sussex.

To find out more, visit www.littlelifesavers.org.