Chicago doctors have launched a course to teach bystanders how to give first aid to the city’s gunshot victims.
Dr. Mamta Swaroop, a local trauma surgeon, started the course as the gun violence rages throughout the city, reports ABC News.
The Chicago South Side Trauma First Responders Course teaches attendees how to tie a tourniquet, check a pulse and stop serious bleeding. Saturday’s class drew 20 people.
Swaroop created the course after realizing that some of the gunshot patients could have been saved if their injuries had been tied up beforehand. Many of the patients bled out before the hospital could save them, she told ABC News.
“The worst thing in the world is when you have to tell families over and over and over again that there was literally nothing you could do for their family member,” she said.
Caleb Jacobs, an attendee of the class, said that he used information from an alien movie to save himself after getting stabbed one night.
“A part of the movie he was bitten by one of the aliens, and he took the tooth out, [blood] gushing out, and he just packed it with his shirt and put pressure to it,” Jacobs said, referring to a character in the movie.
Chicago’s homicide count shot up to 762 in 2016 and shows no signs of slowing down in 2017. Two hundred and sixty-seven people have been shot so far, according to the Chicago Tribune.
President Donald Trump has already threatened to “send in the feds” if the Chicago violence continues. He tweeted out Tuesday that Chicago must stop its “carnage” or he would bring “feds” to the city.
While Swaropp knows that her class won’t solve the city’s violence, she hopes that it will save more lives.
“I feel like this course is a Band-Aid. ‘Til the infrastructure, ’til the city, ’til everything else catches up. This is something that can be a stopgap,” she said.
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