Jennifer Horn/Oakville.com
Oakville YMCA staff members Sara Pearson, Nestor Granados, Bill Joyce & Bernde Krumme & MPP Kevin Flynn.
Staff at the YMCA located in Oakville received recognition and appreciation a month after they had resuscitated a member whose heart stopped several times on the morning of June 23rd.
Bernde Krumme had made his way to the YMCA fitness center in the early hours of the day of his near fatal heart attack. Upon stepping on the treadmill, his heart gave in and his breathing stopped. Three staff members on duty who were trained to perform CPR and use a defibrillator in situations of cardiac arrest were able to keep Krumme alive before the EMS arrived.
In recognition of their heroism, Nestor Granados, Bill Joyce and Sara Pearson, received certificates from MPP Kevin Flynn on behalf of the province as well as the community of Oakville. The staff members were given gifts as well as medals from the Mikey Network.
YMCA of Oakville Board Chair Jarvis Sheridan welcomed the guests and media and proudly spoke of the staff members and the informal recognition event that was held for them two weeks after the incident.
“We are just so incredibly proud of them and proud to know that they had the right presence of mind and the good common sense to work through it; and the result of that is Bernde being here with us today.”
Kevin Flynn, who is also Bernde’s neighbour, spoke of how he had attended a CPR course when he was still the Halton Regional Councilor and how he was the only attendee. The realization that no one in the building knew how to perform CPR scared him. He went on to say how fortunate Bernde was that there were people in the building who knew what to do.
In 2005, Halton Region EMS responded to 363 calls related to absent vital signs – only 7 of those patients survived. “That was a very standard survival rate for communities across Canada and around the world,” said Blake Hurst from the Halton Region Health Department. “In the last 5 years, we have seen survival rates in our communities start to go up.”
A major cause for the increasing survival rate of victims is directly related to the efforts of organisations like the Mikey Network and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. They help to fund schools and organisations across Canada to train staff and purchase equipment that could be used to help save a life.
According to Hurst, four lives were saved out of the five instances of public access defibrillator uses during a five-week period. An important part to note is the number of teenagers who were involved in the resuscitation of the individuals – three out of the five instances involved the youth of Oakville.
“Which goes to say we cannot emphasize enough, the importance of our youth learning how to perform CPR,” said Hurst. “Learn CPR. Take a CPR course. When you do, we end up with a situation like that of Bernde’s. When it doesn’t turn out that way, you may spend the rest of your life thinking you could have done something different that day.”
Tags: Kevin Flynn, YMCA Oakville
About the author: Jennifer Horn
A tree-hugging writer & photographer, recently moved from her Third World life to see if the grass is in fact greener on the other side. Currently studying Print Journalism at Sheridan College in Oakville as well as a BA in Communication Science from the University of South Africa.
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