How to save a life by doing CPR during an emergency

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a procedure that can save one's life. It helps to ensure that blood and oxygen flow through a person whose heart and breathing have stopped.

Knowing how to perform CPR is important because you might not know the situations when the skill would come in handy, and you would save a life.

You might be in a restaurant, playing football or in an airplane when someone collapses due to a heart attack or stroke. You might also happen to be around when a person who drowned is rescued. These are crucial times when CPR is needed.

Performing CPR within the first six minutes of an incident can be the difference between life and death.

Here is how to perform CPR on a person 12 years and above

1. Make sure the environment is safe, there are no smoke, fumes or harmful smells in the air.
2. Call out to the person by gently tapping them and see if they will respond to you.
3. Send someone to call an ambulance or medical help.
4. Lay them flat on the floor.
5. Check if they are breathing or showing signs of life. Watch their chest and put your fingers in the jugular vein around the neck. Do this for just 10 seconds before you begin CPR.
6. Put your one palms at the centre of the adult’s chest and the other on top of it.

7. With your hands locked and your arms straightened, compress the adult’s chest for about 2 metres 30 times.

8. After 30 compressions, give two breaths.

9. Tilt their head back, lift the chin, close their nose, put your mouth on theirs and give two slow gentle breaths.

Continue with the chest compression and breaths until an ambulance arrives or a doctor comes on the scene.