100 Bayelsa students trained in emergency response

FIRST Exploration & Petroleum Development Company Limited and the NNPC Limited/FIRST E&P Joint Venture, in partnership with the Health Emergency Initiative, have trained over 100 secondary school students and teachers from public schools in Bayelsa State on first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other emergency response skills.

The two-day training, held in Yenagoa, was aimed at equipping the participants with basic lifesaving skills to provide immediate assistance to victims of emergencies before the arrival of professional medical help.

Speaking during the programme, the Executive Director and founder of HEI, Paschal Achunine, said the initiative was designed to change the attitude of bystanders who often resort to recording emergencies on social media instead of taking steps to save lives.

Achunine said the programme had been implemented in several states, adding that participants were expected to transfer the knowledge acquired to other students and members of their communities.

“Our expectation is that as opposed to the current practice, where people take pictures and videos and put on social media when an emergency happens, we’ll see more proactive response, a robust response from young people,” he said.

He said the participants were trained in basic first aid, CPR and other pre-hospital emergency skills, adding that timely intervention could improve the survival chances of accident victims and people suffering cardiovascular emergencies.

“We’ve seen a lot of high-profile people, young persons, adults, who slumped, and some were in their office, some were on the road, and people around were pouring water, doing nothing positive to save or to offer them CPR. So this is to change that story,” Achunine said.

The HEI founder noted that road traffic crashes accounted for a significant number of deaths among young people, stressing that equipping students with emergency response skills could help reduce preventable deaths.

He also disclosed that more than 30 per cent of deaths in Nigeria occurred during the pre-hospital stage, describing the training as a proactive intervention to address the challenge.

According to him, HEI had operated a post-crash care programme since 2017 in partnership with organisations, including the Federal Road Safety Corps and hospitals, providing up to N100,000 deposit support for critically injured crash victims taken to hospitals.

He said the first responder training would complement the post-crash intervention by ensuring that appropriate lifesaving measures were taken before victims reached medical facilities.

“This is a further sweetener to ensure that not only when people are critical, but at the early phase of that pre-hospital emergency, more lives can be saved,” he said.

Achunine further disclosed that HEI had partnered with the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council to integrate emergency health education into the school curriculum.

He said approval had been obtained from the relevant authorities to introduce the programme into composite subjects in primary and secondary schools.

“In the coming months, in the new academic year, we’ll start seeing emergency health education, which is a more robust version of this training conducted in parts and conducted with practical applications in secondary and primary schools,” he said.

Also speaking, the Executive Director, Corporate Services, FIRST E&P, Emmanuel Etomi, said the company supported the initiative because timely intervention during emergencies could determine whether a victim survived.

“During a medical emergency, road traffic accident, cardiac arrest, or other life-threatening incident, the difference between life and death can be measured in minutes,” Etomi said.

He said there was a need to ensure that people in communities knew what to do before professional help arrived, adding that the trained students and teachers could serve as first points of assistance during emergencies in schools, homes and communities.

Etomi described the training as an investment in community resilience, saying the knowledge acquired could turn helplessness into informed action and potentially save lives.

He also disclosed that HEI was among the five inaugural beneficiaries of Impact FIRST: Heritage, a multi-year funding programme launched by the NNPC Limited/FIRST E&P Joint Venture to support organisations with proven impact and sustainable delivery models.

Etomi commended the Bayelsa State Government and HEI for bringing the programme to the state, expressing optimism that the partnership would help deepen and expand its impact.