Red Cross Blogs

Boy saves mum from killer peanut

By Mark Cox
April 1, 2010 at 10:00 am

Two important lessons in this week’s newspaper:

1. Something as small as a peanut can cause a person to choke to death.
2. Something as small as a ten-year-old boy can save that person’s life, given the proper training.

There was whooping in Wales and carousing in Caerphilly earlier this week after young hero Elliot Dunn saved his mum’s life. The whole incident, incidentally, shows in terrifying detail how emergency situations can spring up virtually from nowhere – so we all really do need first aid skills.

Mrs Dunn was sneaking a quick chocolate treat when a peanut lodged in her throat, and things quickly turned very serious. She recalled: “The more I tried to cough, the more difficult it became. I started to panic because my breathing was getting shallower and shallower.”

But as luck would have it, young Elliot had done a first aid course at school that very afternoon, which included tips on treating a choking casualty. He told his local paper: “My mum just came into my room choking on a nut. I saw her face going red so I did four back slaps and it shot out.”

If you want to learn the skills to save someone you love, why not sign up for a first aid course?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under First aid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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