Bill to Have Students Receive CPR Training Awaits Governor's Signature

April 20, 2012

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Legislation which would require every Minnesota high school student to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) now sits on Gov. Mark Dayton's desk, and supporters are urging him to sign it into law.

The measure has bipartisan support and makes sense, says state Sen. Dan Hall, R-Burnsville.

"How important is it that we can put more first-aid people out there that can be trained? Bottom line is, we can save a lot of lives."

Hall says the training can be done with no additional costs for Minnesota schools.

"We have the Minnesota Resuscitation Consortium that has said they'll go out and help every school put it up there as volunteers, police and fire that has said, 'Hey, we'll help the schools do it,' so there shouldn't be a cost. We've got the American Red Cross behind us, we've got the Minnesota Heart Association, Medtronic Minnesota, the School Board Association all behind us saying, 'This is really a good thing. We need this.' "

Sen. Chuck Wiger, D-Maplewood, says the impact would be immediate because of the large incidence of cardiac arrest.

"There's hundreds of thousands of people that experience cardiac arrest each year throughout the country. The survival rate is only 7 percent, and if people are trained in CPR, we can make a big impact on the survival rate."

The American Heart Association says bystander CPR can double or triple survival rates. If Dayton signs the bill into law, all high-schoolers in the state would be required to take one 30-minute CPR class before graduation.

More than 20 percent of all deaths in Minnesota are attributable to heart disease.

More information is online at heart.org.

John Michaelson, Public News Service - MN
http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/26021-1