Women 28% Less Likely To Receive CPR

Ahead of International Women's Day, St John Guernsey is arranging a training event to help rectify what it calls a 'shocking' statistic.

Global research shows women who suffer cardiac arrest and stop breathing are less likely to receive life-saving chest compressions and rescue breaths than men.

St John Guernsey's Training officer Lorna Higgins-Bare explains why this is often the case:

"People were worried about physically harming females, as opposed to males.

There is some concern about exposing the body because we have to remove some clothing to do CPR effectively.

Also, men were worried about maybe being accused of assault."

To address this locally, St John Guernsey has arranged an event at Les Cotils on the 6th March. This will be led by women, for women.

Lorna says they intentionally chose a date ahead of International Women's Day and Mother's Day:

"We want to empower women to get involved. If someone doesn't receive live-saving CPR within ten minutes basically the chances of them being able to resuscitate that person falls to next to nil.

So it's vital that CPR is administered immediately."