Indian Express
By Anuradha Mascarenhas
22 February 2011

City Anchor Trio Finds Several Students are Clueless on Basic Medical Emergencies, out to Teach them Among Youngsters
From identifying a pa tient suffering from a stroke, listing the do’s and don’ts when a person has fractured his arm or a child has been bitten by a dog, these three medical students of BJ Medical College and Sassoon General Hospital have been working tirelessly to raise awareness about medical emergencies among students in ICSE and CBSE schools.

"We decided to take just basic emergencies -bleeding, fracture, heart attack, head injury, dog bites, snake bites, choking and electrocution; and at our workshops with class VIII students found that several of them were clueless on how to identify them or what measures are to be taken," says Anka Arora, a finalyear MBBS student at B J Medical College who has initiated the project along with two medical interns at Sassoon General Hospital -Aditya Chandorkar and Aditya Kulte.

The trio had decided to embark on the project despite their busy schedule.
Even among the lay population, there is a lack of knowledge on how to deal with emergencies; they then decided to teach the basics of first aid among youngsters.

Says Chandorkar, "We did online research, spoke to teachers at ICSE and CBSE schools, prepared questionnaires to test the level of awareness about medical emergencies among schoolchildren and the workshop will really help them."

While the research will be presented at a local medical conference in April, what these three found was that only a few children knew chest pain could lead to a heart attack or when the arm was broken or fractured it should never be straightened. "There are so many misconceptions about what is the correct way to deal with snake bites. One should never tie a tight band round the snake bite," says Kulte.

Arora says she had also conducted a similar exercise to raise awareness about female foeticide. "We can conduct our workshops at societies, gyms or any place as and when we are free from our daily schedule."

The students had to verify information from the department of medicine at B J Medical College, list the hospitals that can be contacted in any emergency in the form of a short booklet. "Does our group have a name? No, we are just three medical students hoping to make a difference and create awareness about medical emergencies," says Arora, adding that the pilot project was entirely self-financed.
The trio at a session