I am the opinion that each and every individual should have basic Medic First Aid skills. This includes CPR ( Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation). While in some countries a MFA (Medic First Aid) course is required for even getting a driving license, in others nobody cares. Living in the Philippines since quite a while, I saw horrible scenarios when people try to help with some simple cuts or burns.

Small injuries here are normal and you rarely see a young person without any wounds or scares which never healed properly. That comes many times from poor First Aid Treatment. Instead if disinfecting wounds you can watch relatives, taking weird stuff from trees, soil from the ground, leaves and other stuff to put it on the wound. The last step is having the grandma peeing over it.

This might have been the standard Medic First Aid procedure a couple of hundred years ago, but the world developed a little bit and there are other options available. Another thought I always have is when walking through cities in the Philippines and seeing plenty of older expats with very young attractive woman hand in hand – How are they reacting if the older guy has a heart-attack while overexercising, or just because of the heat and moisture they are not used to.

Are this young girls able to help the guy with life-supporting treatment until professional help arrives?

Did they ever get a MFA/CPR Instruction?

Well, this thoughts might sound a bit weird for my valuable readers but after a long time living here I do know of cases where people died because of the treatment. Being a PADI SCUBA Diving instructor it is my duty to be up to date with all MFA and CPR Procedures. Actually it is called EFR (Emergency first Response) in the PADI system. Each Rescue Student I have is required to have a valid EfR / MFA certification which includes CPR Instructions. IF they don’t have this, I can teach them EFR courses and they earn the status as a emergancy First Responder.




Anyway, I am not allowed to post any fractions of the PADI EFR instruction video here, but I found a great short CPR Instruction Video I would like to share with you guys.

cheers and enjoy

Rhoody