Kigali, 12-13 September 2023. Healthy People Rwanda (HPR) hosted a two-day volunteer training under the first aid initiative Rwanda (FAIR). The program aims to reduce mortality and morbidity rates related to road traffic accidents through raising awareness and policy advocacy.
On the first day, HPR’s Dr. Dieudonné Rutagumba guided the volunteers through the road safety curriculum that they will use to educate high school students across Kigali to behave responsibly on the road. The road safety curriculum includes important tips such as risk factors for road crashes and their consequences namely: death, disability, emotional trauma, and poverty, among others.
A troublesome fact that almost 50% of road crash deaths are in Africa despite the continent accounting for just 2% of the world’s cars was brought to the attention of the volunteers, making it imperative for everyone to have minimal first aid skills. Even so, prioritizing responsible behavior on the road is more important than skill alone.
“While first aid skills are crucial, it is much more important to focus on safe road use in your teaching as it is key to prevention of road crashes” HPR President Dr. Innocent Nzeyimana told volunteers in his remarks.
Volunteers were also encouraged to instill in the students the right mindset regarding traffic crashes, shunning the perception that it’s an accident, since there’s always somebody at fault.
On the 2nd and final day of the training, first aid trainer Arthur Katarebe led an engaging discussion on road safety curriculum and a hands-on practice session on essential first aid skills such as stopping the bleed, calling for help and performing the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), immobilizing a fractured bone, handling a burn, among others.
As training session concluded, volunteers received certificates of participation and were reminded to apply the skills they had acquired. “The end of this session doesn’t signify the end of your learning journey, keep doing practice to prevent partial loss or even complete forgetting what you learnt,” emphasized Dr. Dieudonné
In addition to benefiting from the training that will be conducted by more than 15 volunteers that participated, selected schools will also be provided with a first aid kit for their use.