Groupama wants to train 1 million people in first aid techniques for free

Recognising a cardiac arrest, knowing how to react in the event of choking or discomfort: these are all situations that can happen at any time and for which anyone can be counted on. Groupama therefore wishes to raise awareness among the general public of life-saving techniques through physical training and video tutorials. Members and their families, employees, elected officials, and anyone who wants to save lives will be able to benefit.

France is one of the most backward countries in Europe when it comes to first aid training: only 27% of its inhabitants have benefited from it, whereas this percentage reaches 95% in Norway .

In 2018, the government made this concern one of the main lines of its prevention policy, announcing that it wanted to reach 80% of people trained. This ambition was completed by the law of 3 July 2020, which created the status of “citizen rescuer”: during an intervention, the criminal liability of the rescuer is reduced, and his civil liability is lifted in case of damage to the victim.

The Red Cross reminds us that if more French people were aware of this, 20,000 lives could be saved every year.

A large-scale program

Groupama did not wait for this observation to be made before taking action: for 60 years, prevention has been at the heart of its activities, and training has been conducted locally for many years. But as a mutual insurer, and aware of the major stakes involved in this cause, Groupama has chosen to set itself an ambitious challenge: to train 1 million people in life-saving techniques.

Throughout France, members and their families, employees, elected officials, and any interested person who is not a Groupama customer, will be offered two-to-three-hour sessions to learn how to react in the event of discomfort, choking, or cardiac arrest…

These are always impressive situations, but each of us can become an essential link in the chain while waiting for the emergency services. It takes an average of 13 minutes for them to arrive on the scene. However, in the case of a cardiac accident, for example, each minute spent without massage reduces the victim’s chance of survival by 10%.3 Moreover, life-saving techniques do not require any particular skills: anyone can learn them and perform them.

The assistance of local experts

Throughout the country, these training sessions will be given progressively from the fourth quarter of 2021, and during the years to come, by local actors such as the fire brigade, the Red Cross, the civil protection…

These physical sessions will be complemented by digital actions in the form of video tutorials. Designed with an expert, they will explain in a clear and didactic way how to treat a burn, how to react to a person who is choking, who has a fracture or who is a victim of a fainting accident. Depending on the topic, they will be adapted to the target audience (infants, children, adults).