Gonzalo is eleven years old and plays at snack time with his friends. He sees one of them suddenly stop playing and put his hands on his neck, but, far from panicking, he approaches him, carefully executes the Heimlich maneuver, and his partner expels the piece of sandwich from his mouth. Mateo is four years old and sees that his mother does not wake up. Maybe she was asleep, but she should have taken him to school and she didn’t. If mom doesn’t wake up when you shake her, something strange is happening. He remembers what he was taught: he has a mouth, a nose and two eyes, 1-1-2. Mark and call. Sofía, nine years old, calls the emergency services because something is wrong with her grandfather: his chest hurts a lot. He remembers to leave his cell phone open. As the ambulance arrives, he tries to give her a cardiac massage. Most of the names of these boys and girls aren’t real, but what they did is. The first case, that of Gonzalo, occurred a few days ago in León, a feat for which his class gave him a diploma that said: “Hero. On October 9, 2024, he saved the life of a colleague.
“I started crying when they told me. It is one of the many joys that I have had,” says Ignacio Manrique about the case of Sofía, who had participated in one of the workshops for children that he organizes as president of the Spanish Resuscitation Group pediatric cardiorespiratory and director of the Valencian Institute of Pediatrics. .
These types of workshops, in which professionals teach boys and girls how to respond to emergency situations that can arise in everyday life, have continued to grow over the past decade. One of the turning points that explains this phenomenon, believes Marta Nonide, one of the guilty From its popularization, it’s simple: more and more children are alone at home. “Until a few years ago, it was the pack – the family – that took care: there was always a housewife at home, the grandparents were much closer and there were fewer “only children”, he analyzes.
Nonide is a doctor at the Asturias SAMU and leads the “CPR from my school” project: an idea that started in 2014 and has inspired many countries around the world. In countries like Argentina, Uruguay or Chile, they reproduce their workshops. One of her best-known resources, the resuscitation song, has been translated into Guarani, French, English… “It’s all over the world,” she explains proudly.
Small, but not so small
“You begin to wonder: How many of you are left alone with an elder? Only with a father, mother, grandfather, brother or teacher. What if the teacher faints? Is the class still playing football? Or do you immediately realize something strange is happening here and run for help? From the age of eight this is obvious, but below the age of eight if they don’t practice it, they don’t know it. If you practice it, they are little “soldiers” who obey, act and react much better than any adult. They don’t have the doubts of an adult: they were told they had to do this and they do it. It’s like when you tell them ‘you have to hold hands in line’, because that’s what they do”, explains the Asturian doctor.
“People say: ‘they are too small’. Yes, they are very small, but I can teach a three-year-old child, with gestures, to call 112. We also teach them to put a person in a position side safety, which is a life-saving position We ask them to bring their favorite stuffed animals to school and the children like it because they feel like they are saving “their little stuffed animal”. , up to five years old, can learn the direction in which they are or that they should call 112 or a neighbor if CPR needs to be performed,” explains Laura Ruiz, nurse and director of the Salvando Vidas company, who gives first aid courses.
Saving lives from the age of three
“A three-year-old child with, for example, an epileptic or diabetic parent can perfectly learn, mechanize… Call the neighbor or speak to a virtual assistant such as Alexa to help him. And from the age of four, practically everything you want, such as maneuvers to clear the airways or how to save an adult if they are choking. After the age of eight, they already practice everything else in pairs and exchange the soft toys for junior mannequins.
Until about 14 years old, they will not be able to perform effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation on an adult, because they do not have enough strength and maturity. However, they explain, when the time comes, in youth or adulthood, they will know how to perform the maneuver perfectly.
We have encountered many situations where, if we had been warned earlier, these people could have been saved: strokes or children who had been with their deceased grandfather for 12 hours.
Marta Nonide
— Creator of my school’s RCP project
However, despite this emerging popularity, these workshops are not standardized across the country. The royal decree of February 28, 2014 which establishes the basic curriculum for primary education, urges schools to include first aid teaching in the core primary school curriculumbut this usually doesn’t happen. In recent years, illustrated books like Nursing bear and first aid (self-published in 2021 by Marta Almansa Esteva, pediatric nurse) or Oh! A book about the body, wounds and how we heal (Takatuka), released last month.
The story of my school’s RCP project
It all started with a “set of coincidences”. Marta Nonide worked at the mobile intensive care unit in Gijón and often arrived in places where the first witness to the emergency was a child. “We have encountered many situations where, if we had been warned earlier, these people could have been saved. A stroke, hypoglycemia, a blow to the head or children who have been with their deceased grandfather for 12 hours. And, with that, the drama, the cries, the howls, the child, who understood nothing…”, he said.
Added to this is a call received in 2012 from an eight-year-old girl: “my grandmother fainted and my parents told me that if that happened, I was going to call 112 and do whatever I could. ‘they told me and responded to everything’. they would ask me,” said the creature. It turned out to be a stroke. They asked her the relevant questions to verify this and, as she was alone with her six-year-old sister, Nonide asked her if by giving her instructions she could put her “grandmother” aside. So, the two sisters managed to put her in a safe side position and within 15 minutes help was there.
60% of Spaniards do not feel qualified to respond to this type of emergency and 54% admit to having never received first aid training.
Her children were three and four years old at the time, and she began to wonder, “What if something happened to me while I was alone with them?” Or his father? He then began giving workshops. One day he uploaded a video to social media and the internet exploded. The next day, the film was viewed three million times and for three days, “it was a real bombardment”. It was the first time, he said, that so many people had seen five-year-olds talking about resuscitation and taking an adult aside in an emergency. Today, projects like this exist throughout Spain.
A way to solve the low rate of CPR maneuvers
The specialists consulted assure that giving these workshops in childhood is the way to resolve the low percentage that we have in Spain of people who know how to practice CPR. According to a study carried out by the MAPFRE Foundation and the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (SEMES), 60% of Spaniards do not feel qualified to respond to this type of emergency and 54% admit to having never received training courses. FIRST AID. The rate of carrying out CPR maneuvers in Spain, according to a study by EuReCa TWO, a project of the European Resurrection Council (ERC), is less than 15%.
On the other hand, in the Nordic countries, where CPR training is integrated into the education system and where it is more common for regular courses to be offered to the population from a very young age, a large majority say they know how to perform CPR and rescue. also put into practice. in practice in emergency situations. In countries like Norway, Denmark and Sweden, it is estimated that between 70 and 80% of the population has received CPR training.
Nonide assures that it is not necessary to wait until adolescence to transmit this knowledge, because with it comes shame and phrases like “I’m a boy, I don’t encourage girls.” “There, you lose a lot. This doesn’t happen with children. In their childhood, they mechanize all the techniques to perfection. When they are teenagers and they have to help someone, they will do it perfectly and without hesitation. One hour a year is enough, he says. “If at school we give an hour to five year olds, we recycle to six, seven, eight… Until sixteen years old, that’s all. You should put this on your CV. You can put it in physical education, in natural subjects, in values…”.
Ignacio Manrique, as president of the Spanish Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Group, supports this and highlights the importance that these workshops begin to be regulated, that they pass a series of controls or that they request accreditation with organizations like his. Over the past five years, there has been a boom of this type of workshop, and he assures: “this will continue to develop and it will be unstoppable”.
