30,000 volunteers to tender emergency care during CWG

As many as 30,000 young volunteers, who are fluent in English, will be trained to help people and reach them to hospitals in time in case of accidents during the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG). The first batch of 200 such youngsters has already been rolled out for the ongoing CWG General Assembly here.

The volunteers are being trained by an NGO, Philanthrope, along with the organizing committee of the 2010 CWG.

'Safety training is vital more so for any event involving large gathering of people. Philanthrope has developed diverse modules for safety training and we will adapt and customize these to suit the requirements outlined to us by the Organizing Committee,' Angeli Qwatra, founder head of Philanthrope, said Wednesday.

'It helps common people handle situations calmly, competently and methodically in a crisis and thus avert a potential fatality or risk. As has been said 'prevention is better than cure', and we are gratified at being entrusted with this important mandate,' she added.

The volunteers would be above 18 years of age, physically fit, fluent in English and with no criminal records.

The first batch of 200 volunteers was trained during a workshop last week and has been working during the General Assembly Oct 6-13. The remaining would be trained before June 2010.

Qwatra added: 'These measures will lead to saving lives, decreasing deaths from injuries and accidents as mishandling of victims by relatives/bystanders often leads to worsening of injuries and sometimes such mistakes cost the lives of their loved ones.'

According to Qwatra's research, knowledge on emergency help measures is very low even among the educated in India and people live with many myths and misconceptions, which often lead to accidents or injuries being handled wrongly.