NASHVILLE, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Members of a U.S. health group say training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and use of defibrillators should be a requirement for high school graduation.
Leaders of the American Heart Association say their advisory recommending the mandatory emergency training in high school would immediately increase the number of people ready to respond to sudden cardiac arrest -- the leading cause of death in the United States.
The advisory, published in the journal Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, calls for state legislatures to mandate and provide funding for such training. The benefits, the authors say, would far outweigh the costs.
"Training of all secondary education students will add a million trained rescuers to the population every few years," co-author Mary Fran Hazinski of Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville says in a statement. "Those students will be ready, willing and able to act for many years to come, whenever they witness an emergency within the community. Currently, only about 30 percent of victims of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest receive any type of CPR."
Thirty-six states already encourage CPR training in schools and existing programs use volunteer instructors or video-based programs and draw support from businesses, foundations, civic organizations and public agencies.
