citizenAID delivers demonstrations in Scotland

May 30, 2018, took citizenAID® over the border to a flying start with what proved to be an oversubscribed event at the Banqueting Hall of Glasgow City Council Chambers.

Co-organised by Miss Aurélie Hay-David of citizenAID® and Constable Linda Begley of Police Scotland, attendees included representatives from across the public sector services and mass gathering venues (sports stadia, hotels and bars, shopping centres).

In attendance was citizenAID® co-founder Brigadier Tim Hodgetts, Professor Colville Laird representing the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care) and Superintendent Richie Adams of Police Scotland. We heard about the current threats from Dr David Lowe, a pre-eminent counter-terrorism academic; and, the lessons of military medicine from Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hunt, an operationally experienced Army doctor. Understanding of the core national ‘Run-Hide-Tell’ safety message was delivered by Sergeant Graeme Stirling. Donna Baillie and Lyndon Neal of the Scottish Ambulance Service provided insight into preparation and planning for a major incident involving casualties.

But this event was more than a series of lectures: the audience was given a practical demonstration of public actions to save lives in the first few minutes after a deliberate attack, led by hospital consultant Dr Shaun McLeod, followed by supervised practical hands on skills for all attendees from a team of volunteer instructors. The practical skills were focused on how to stop life-threatening limb bleeding using a tourniquet, and introduced attendees to the charity’s low cost, effective, improvised tourniquet-the Tourni-Key™. The afternoon session was two carefully orchestrated exercises, where a panel of emergency service and local authority experts responded to realistic events after a shopping centre shooting and a stadium bomb, with the audience learning from their sequential rapid decisions.

We thank our co-organiser, Constable Linda Begley, the Police Scotland Youth Volunteers, the instructors/clinicians and our sponsors (Best Bar None, Glasgow; Glasgow City Council; SecuriGroup; GGC NHS Trust; Area Partnership Fund; Prometheus Alphamed). We look forward to organising further events for the public sector and the Scottish public.

citizenAID® is now the proud winner of three awards recognising its contribution to public resilience. In 2017, the app received the "Innovation Award" from the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network. In 2018, citizenAID® received the "National Counter Terror Project Award", while the children’s book Moggy’s Coming (an allegory of a terror attack where a cat attacks a school of mice) was named the "Most Innovative Product of the Year" at the Business Continuity Awards.

Miss Aurélie Hay-David, Scottish Ambassador a.hay-david@citizenaid.org