To mark International Emergency Medicine Day today, (Monday, 27 May 2019) the Irish Heart Foundation is reaffirming its mission to save lives.

Approximately 5,000 lives are lost every year in Ireland to sudden cardiac arrest.

That is about 13 deaths every day.

Thousands more people lose their lives in Ireland every year due to cardiovascular disease; a major cause of heart attack and stroke.

A heart attack and a cardiac arrest are two different but equally serious heart events, both of which require immediate medical attention.

A cardiac arrest requires an emergency response and the person suffering the cardiac arrest needs immediate CPR.

Around 70 per cent of cardiac arrests happen at home in front of a loved one. If someone nearby knows CPR and can start performing compressions quickly, they can double or even triple a person’s chances of survival.

In both a cardiac arrest and a heart attack the ambulance service needs to be called immediately on either 112 or 999.

In the event of a cardiac arrest the person will be unresponsive and not breathing properly, whereas when the person is suffering a heart attack they will still be responding and will be breathing.

Emergency medicine deals with life and death every day and to mark International Emergency Medicine Day 2019, we at the Irish Heart Foundation are reaffirming our mission to save lives.

Over the next two years the Irish Heart Foundation aims to create a nation of lifesavers by training as many people as possible in the lifesaving skill of CPR.

Thanks to the support of Abbott and ESB Networks, the Irish Heart Foundation is delivering the Hands for Life, free community CPR training programme through which it will train 100,000 people to perform live saving CPR. This in turn will improve people’s chances of surviving a cardiac arrest in Ireland.

Emergency Medicine Day was established for the first-time last year by the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM).

It is now an annual event dedicated to celebrating professionals in the field and encouraging the public and healthcare policymakers all around the world to think and talk about emergency medicine.

The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) will join other European countries today in marking the 27th of May as international Emergency Medicine Day.

Free CPR courses are currently being held across the country – if you would like to learn this life saving skill please sign up here.