Quantcast
Published On: Sun, Nov 5th, 2017

As Chicago shootings, murders continue city rolls out ‘Stop the bleed’ campaign

As a man and a woman were killed in separate shootings on the Far South Side and 13 other people, including a 14-year-old boy, were injured in attacks in Chicago between Saturday and Sunday mornings, the latest city program is called “Stop the Bleed.”

Started under the Obama administration after Sandy Hook, Stop the Bleed is a national effort which aims to arm civilians with skills and bleeding control kits to provide crucial aid in an emergency until medical professionals can take over.

In Chicago, more than 3,000 people have been shot this year, and the victim of a gunshot wound can bleed to death in only five minutes.

photo Gerd Altmann via pixabay

Bystanders are on the scene before first responders, and experts say bleeding remains one of the leading preventable causes of death for such victims.

As another weekend brings death and violence, as chronicled by the Chicago Tribune, more gun laws and blaming legal gun owners continue to be the political mantra.

Stop the Bleed teaches the same kind of techniques paramedics use almost every day to save lives. Additionally, these skills are also valuable for accidents that can occur at home, work or on the road. Officials say that keeping a first-aid kit with a tourniquet and blood-clotting gauze at home should be as routine as having a smoke detector.

Dr. Kevin Chow, who has taught the Stop the Bleed course at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said someone used a ripped T-shirt, an apple and a pencil to make a tourniquet to save another person’s life.

In a different case, two soccer players collided, leaving a large gash in one player’s leg. A friend packed the wound with a clean T-shirt to stop the bleeding until they could get to a hospital.

The long-term goal of the program is to hold classes at police stations, churches, community centers, offices and schools, and to make bleeding control kits as common as defibrillators in public places.

“A high school student can learn the same techniques I would use to hold pressure, pack a wound or apply a tourniquet,” Chow said. “These are skills that we are trying to get into everyone’s hands so that it becomes common knowledge. … We tell people that they can make a huge difference and be the reason someone lives.”

photo JRLibby

On the DISPATCH: Headlines  Local  Opinion

Subscribe to Weekly Newsletter

* indicates required
/ ( mm / dd ) [ALL INFO CONFIDENTIAL]

About the Author

- Catherine "Kaye" Wonderhouse, a proud descendant of the Wunderhaus family is the Colorado Correspondent who will add more coverage, interviews and reports from this midwest area.

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these html tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

like_us_on_facebook

 

The Global Dispatch Facebook page- click here

Movie News Facebook page - click here

Television News Facebook page - click here

Weird News Facebook page - click here 

DISPATCH RADIO

dispatch_radio

THE BRANDON JONES SHOW

brandon_jones_show-logo

Archives