Empowering the community: basic life support community programme

Community awareness is of great importance, especially for life-saving information and skills. The incidence of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has shown a tremendous increase in number in recent years. Early identification of cardiac arrest and effective basic life support (BLS) is an essential determinant of the survival of cardiac arrest victims. Empowering the community on early BLS is a way forward to increase out-of-hospital victim survival. ‘Program Komuniti BLS’ is a brainchild of the Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty of Medicine Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and Hospital Al-Sultan Abdullah UiTM to raise public awareness among the community on the importance of BLS. It aims to empower the community on the importance of early identification of cardiac arrest, early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and using an automated external defibrillator (AED).