2 000 persons trained in Emergency Cardiac Care

 

Two thousand persons to date have been trained in Emergency Cardiac Care (ECC) by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Barbados (HSFB) Inc.
 
So states the President, Humphrey Metzgen who spoke to the media yesterday after a tour by the Chinese Ambassador, Wang Ke and the presentation of two automated external defibrillator (AED) units by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Barbados to the Foundation.
 
He told the representatives of the Embassy that the two countries have a lot of things in common in spite of the differences in the size of their population and one of these is having persons in the population who suffer from one or more of the chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs)
“I believe that our two countries, despite their difference in size of population, are suffering from similar problems – from the impact of non-communicable diseases and in particular cardiovascular disease. Associated with this are problems arising from obesity, diabetes and other long term diseases.”
 
He stated that at the Foundation they are working on addressing this issue from the Barbadian perspective and as a result, some of their initiatives include helping persons who have suffered from a heart attack or had heart surgery; providing rehabilitation services to 250 clients and training both medical professionals and the mainstream public in ECC and other areas.
 
“At the Foundation, we are working on a number of fronts to combat cardiovascular diseases. Our immediate task is to help those who have suffered a heart attack or who have had heart surgery to get back to full health. Our Coronary Prevention Programme provides rehabilitation services to 250 clients who are managed and treated by our fully trained experts – both doctors and nurses. We are also exposing lay people and medical personnel to training in emergency cardiac care, with our ECC programme. In our financial year 2016, we trained 2 000 persons.”
 
In addition, they continue to educate persons on vital issues associated with heart healthy practices with their newsletter which more than 40,000 Barbadians read.
 
“But what I think is perhaps even more important is the advocacy work which the Foundation is spearheading. You may be surprised to hear that every week our newsletter is reaching over 40,000 Barbadians with information, tips, new and a whole host of interesting articles, which sensitise the audience to ways of combating and avoiding potential heart disease and strokes.”
 
He continued, “This newsletter is reaching out to an even wider audience with mainstream media taking articles and publishing them on a regular basis. So just as the Foundation led the way in the battle against tobacco smoking – a battle that I am glad to say has mostly been won, we are now in the vanguard of promoting healthy lifestyles in the light of the high fat, high sugar, low exercise world that we live in.”

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