The Pakistan Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Tuesday organised a ceremony in connection with the World First Aid Day to highlight the importance of first aid in the daily life of people and the PRCS’s contribution towards ensuring a first aider at every home.
Secretary General PRCS Khalid Bin Majeed, Joint Director Operations Abaidullah Khan, delegation heads of partner national societies, Cooperation Coordinator of the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) Pakistan Zubair Khan, officers and volunteers were in attendance.
Speaking on the occasion, Khalid Bin Majeed said the PRCS’s First Aid Training (FAT) program was successfully going on in 52 districts of the country and the program will be expanded in the coming days. He said the PRCS volunteers provided first aid training to around 2,500 participants of a sit-in staged recently at the Peshawar Morr and around 200 people injured in the Mirpur quake. He said it was a matter of huge pride for him that in addition to imparting first aid training at the community level, the FAT program had also trained more than 1000 people belonging to the neglected communities including the transgender persons, religious minorities, and differently abled persons.
Zubair Khan said the PAT program was continuing successfully countrywide and it was encouraging that students, lawyers, and journalists were also being equipped with the first aid skills. He praised the PRCS’s initiative of imparting first aid training to transgender persons, differently abled people and religious minorities.
On this occasion, PRCS first aider from the KP branch Moazzam Shah, who represented Pakistan in the ICRC General Assembly session in Geneva, read out his idea that had drawn applause from around 2,000 participants from the representatives of 192 countries.
Transgender Nadeem Kashish, who has been trained in first aid, thanked the PRCS for enabling the transgender persons to at least provide first aid to their community in emergencies. On this occasion, Salman Shah and Waqas received appreciation letters and prize money as the best District First Aider and First Aider of the Year respectively. At the end of the ceremony, the first aid teams from different parts of the country practically demonstrated how to impart first aid training during emergency situations.
