Medical staff at the No 1 Hospital of Shanxi Medical University teach people CPR in Taiyuan on May 22. [Photo/Shanxi Daily]

Shanxi province has recently launched a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) public education project to improve residents' knowledge of first aid and emergency medicine.

According to the project, 45 certified municipal hospitals across Shanxi will partner with hospitals in 58 counties that have relatively few people trained in CPR, and train three to five CPR instructors for free in each county. Shanxi aims to eventually ensure all medical staff are qualified for training residents?in CPR.

Shanxi nursing association set up a Red Cross nursing team which has 58 divisions to facilitate the implementation of the project. So far, more than 8,000 volunteers have joined the team. As the backbone of the project, they will receive professional training from mentors and take CPR workshops to households, communities and public places in Shanxi.

In China, the success rate for CPR given to patients who are in cardiac arrest and not at a hospital is below 1 percent and less than 10 in 1,000 people have CPR skills. The project is designed to help improve the situation.

Currently, Shanxi has 45 institutions certified as training bases for a national CPR household education project. More than 320 medical staff from 70 medical institutions in the province have obtained national-level qualifications for CPR training and teaching.