Students learn life-saving skills as part of campaign

Sports students have been trained to become life-savers as part of a national campaign to raise awareness of Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS).

Loughborough College learners were taught how to perform CPR and use defibrillators at a special session to coincide with Leicestershire SADS Week (3rd – 9th October).

It was offered up by UK Coaching and co-ordinated by College lecturer Steve Wilkinson, a former Leicester City FC player whose team mate Steve Humphries lost his son Joe to SADS a decade ago this year in 2012.

Steve said: “Health and wellbeing of our students is at the heart of everything we do and I’m so pleased that we are able to run this invaluable, life-saving training.

“It is primarily aimed at our Talented Athlete Support Scheme students and with so many sports students passing through our corridors, the skills they learn on these sessions could one day prove vital in saving someone’s life.

“The training forms part of our induction workshops for our elite young athletes as equipping young people and adults with life-long, life-saving skills is absolutely part of what we do to enrich our students and the community.”

The Joe Humphries Trust, set up in memory of Joe, also provides a wealth of information about SADS along with ways of getting involved in raising awareness of the condition which claims the lives of around 500 people in the UK each year.

Find out more here: https://www.jhmt.org.uk/