The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) in association with American Heart Association (AHA) has chalked out an Arabic translation of the AHA’s successful Heart Saver First Aid course, in order to reach out to a larger number of the population living and working in Dubai and the Arab world.
The course, first launched in Dubai, is the first Arabic course produced by the AHA. The content’s of the course are the same as the AHA’s First Aid Heart Saver course. The translations was commissioned to a professional organisation and reviewed by a team of Arab healthcare professionals, led by regional AHA faculty from the DHA.
Dr Khalil Qayed, Director of Medical Education Department at the DHA said,” This partnership is the fruit of our existing log-term association with the AHA in life support and stimulation training.”
“The need to have an Arabic course in addition to the English one stems from the common belief of both organisations, which is the need to train more people in First Aid and CPR, so that we can help save more lives in Dubai. Thus, we decided to work on an Arabic language course because it gave us the opportunity to reach out to a larger audience base as well as give emphasis to our Arabic identity,” he added.
Glenn M Vanden Houten, the AHA’s territory director for Europe and Africa and acting territory director of the Middle East, said, “Effective CPR can help make the difference between life and death, buying valuable time and increasing the likelihood that the victim can successfully be defibrillated by an electric shock. It is a universal opportunity, the more people and bystanders who are trained ad aware of their ability, the more lives that will be saved.”
The course is aimed to reach out to larger sections of the public, said Dr Mohamed Nasaif, head of the Professional Development Centre at the Medical Education Department of the DHA.
“The seven-hour training programme is expected to begin in May and the DHA will provide training by reaching out to a different focus group. We aim to begin training Dubai government employees, particularly those working in airports and other such places that have a high volume of people at any given point in time,” said Dr Nasaif.
He said that the DHA will also provide training for schools and sports clubs. Individuals from the general public, interested in upgrading their kills will also be welcome. The also applies to institutions that would like to train their staff, especially those contemplating the purchase of Automated External Defibrillators (AED) for their facilities.
“The importance of training people in First Aid and CPR cannot be over emphasised,” he said.
Source: Gulf Today