by Thomas Locke
With the right skills and knowledge YOU can deliver care to yourself , your friends and family and to the stranger caught up in a terrorist attack”
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| Damage to the the London Underground train involved in the terrorist attack at Aldgate tube station (Photo: PA) |
“We give people skills that can save lives” Brigadier Tim Hodgetts has
told The Portsmouth Point.
citizenAID™, developed by experienced UK
civilian and military clinicians, Tim Hodgetts, Keith Porter, Andrew
Thurgood and Peter Mahoney, consists of an app, handbook and website that help the general public to save lives in a bombing, stabbing or shooting incident.
The reason that this training is so vital is due to the “therapeutic
vacuum” between when you call 999 and when the emergency services arrive. Tim
told us that “Although we have fabulous emergency services, we need to be able
to do something to keep people alive or to save lives before the emergency
services can arrive”
He says that first-aid is a “really important life skill because you
never know when an incident is going to happen” and that “we need a critical
mass of the public who are able to do something useful if they are the
bystander when an incident happens”
He has said that “I think that we have pitched the level right with
citizenAID in terms of making sure they understand safety messages to keep
themselves safe” and “we give them [the public] skills that can save lives but
can be relatively simply understood by all levels of literacy and education.”
The initiative has been supported by the counter-terrorism police. He
has said that “while general first aid training prepare you for everyday
emergencies, what citizenAID™ is designed for is to help the public in a
shooting, stabbing or bombing incident” . These incidents are
“unusual but not impossible to be involved in.”
He continued to say that “Because of recent events in Europe over the
last eighteen months or so, together with colleagues, we decided that now is
the time” citizenAID™ wants to generate a “critical mass of people who will
have some basic understanding of what to do in these specific situations.”
Brigadier Tim Hodgetts spent “25 years developing systems that have
spread around the world for professionals in how to manage multiple casualties
after a bombing, a train crash, a plane crash, any kind of incident.”
“By providing free materials that people can download, such as the app,
it means that it is accessible to anybody who wants to make themselves
prepared.”
“The #1 Trending App”
Since its launch, Tim has told us that “it is already growing faster
than we have ever anticipated” On the day of the launch, the citizenAID™
website received over 1,000,000 hits, their FaceBook Live video received
400,000 views and their app was the #1 trending app across Google Play and
iTunes. Tim said that “We have identified something that the public is
interested in”.
He expects citizenAID™ to “grow in the UK and grow the free information
and also develop accredited training for those who want it” He also wants to
internationalise also and has received interest from across Europe, Russia, the
Philippines, Australia and Brazil. A US version of the app has already been
published.
Tim also told The Portsmouth Point that “I genuinely believe that
First-Aid skills matter and I also believe that the younger you start
something, the more it becomes part of your character and your actions as a
whole”
He also said that “as an emergency physician, I see the impact of when
people who can do good First-Aid at a point of injury or illness before the
patient arrives at the hospital”
“We believe that being prepared really matters. Those first 5 minutes
count, they make the difference, you make the difference. You can save lives…
With the right skills and knowledge YOU can deliver care to yourself , your friends and family and to the stranger caught up in a terrorist attack”
You can find their website here
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