Excerpt from reliefweb.int
Tongan communities know first-hand what it’s like to live through a terrifying event, unable to access medical facilities. Now, as they recover from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption and subsequent tsunami, a group of people are learning vital first aid skills to take back to their communities across the archipelago to help them be more prepared for future emergencies.
New Zealand Red Cross international delegate Lesley Jacobson has just returned to Aotearoa New Zealand after spending two weeks teaching community first aid to 16 local first aid trainers from four different islands.
‘Community first aid training’ is all about finding out what has happened recently in the community. This might include a child choking, a drowning incident or cooking burns. These examples are then used to provide bite sized chunks of critical first aid information to course participants. They in turn, take back this knowledge to their own communities and teach people in a similar way.
