Red Cross Blogs

Mobile phones: annoyance or life-saver?

By Mark Cox
May 17, 2010 at 11:11 am

What does your mobile phone mean to you? For many people, these wee annoying items have evolved into the status of friend, confidante, virtually a fifth limb. (This is especially true of younglings, who seem semi-permanently glued to them. What are they all saying?)

Normally, I don’t like mobile phones. They are little bricks of sadness that make constant demands on – and gradually take control of – their owners.

Not only do they ruin plays and movies with their sudden, unprompted blurting. Mobiles also make people shout things like ‘I’m just leaving Carlisle. Carlisle. No, Car-lisle!’ on trains. They encourage paranoia and insecurity when calls go unanswered because people think they’re being ‘call-screened’. They even turn normally reasonable people into rude automatons who stop you mid-conversation to say: ‘Hang on, I have to get this’. Horrible little machines.

And yet. And yet…I came across a great story recently about aid worker Dan Woolley, whose mobile phone literally saved his life. He was stuck under Haitian earthquake rubble and terribly injured when he remembered there was a first aid app on his iPhone.

Looking up excessive bleeding and compound fractures, he followed the instructions and applied life-saving treatment to his own injuries. He later recalled: “I knew I wasn’t making mistakes and that gave me the confidence to treat my wounds properly.”

The Red Cross also has a series of first aid videos that you can easily download to your mobile phone. It means that, if you’re ever in trouble yourself or come across an accident scene, you’ll have all the right information to hand. As Dan found, that can make a huge difference when someone’s life is at stake.

I’m still annoyed about all those stupid ringtones at the theatre, though.

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Tags: Haiti, iphone

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 11:11 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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