Suffocation and First Aid

1What is suffocation?

Suffocation happens when a person cannot get enough oxygen because air cannot reach the lungs. The brain needs oxygen all the time. After only a few minutes without it, the brain can be badly damaged, so help must come quickly.

2Common causes

• Choking: food, sweets, groundnuts, beans, a coin or a small toy blocks the windpipe.
• Drowning: water enters the airways, for example in a lake, river, pond, flooded pit or water tank.
• Smoke and poisonous gas: house fires, or a charcoal stove (imbabura) burning in a closed room. Burning charcoal gives off carbon monoxide, a poison gas you cannot see or smell.
• Covering the nose and mouth: a plastic bag over the head, or a baby's face pressed into a soft pillow.
• Being buried: soil falling in a landslide or a collapsing pit.
• Something tight round the neck, such as a rope or cord.

3How to prevent suffocation

• Chew food well. Do not run, laugh or talk with food in your mouth.
• Keep small objects, coins and plastic bags away from babies and small children.
• Never bring a burning charcoal stove into a bedroom, and never sleep with one in a closed room.
• Never swim alone. Swim only where an adult is watching, and keep away from deep water, flooded rivers and open pits.
• Stay out of steep, loose pits and away from slopes that may slide in the rainy season.

4First aid for choking

• If the person can still cough, speak or breathe, tell them to keep coughing hard. The cough may push the object out. Stay with them.
• If they cannot cough, speak or breathe, shout for an adult at once. A helper stands beside them, leans them forward and gives up to five firm back blows between the shoulder blades with the heel of the hand.
• If the object is still stuck, an adult trained in first aid gives up to five quick abdominal thrusts (sharp pushes inwards and upwards just above the belly button). Babies need a different method, done only by trained adults.
• Call 912, Rwanda's free ambulance number, if the object does not come out or the person becomes very weak.

5First aid for drowning

Remember: reach or throw, don't go. Do not jump in yourself. Reach out with a long stick, a rope or a piece of cloth, or throw something that floats, such as an empty jerrycan or a plastic bottle. Shout for adults. When the person is out of the water, call 912. A trained adult checks their breathing and, if they are not breathing, gives rescue breaths and chest compressions (pressing hard and fast on the middle of the chest). This is called resuscitation.

6First aid for smoke or gas

Shout "Fire!" or call for help. Do not run into a room full of smoke. If it is safe, adults open doors and windows and carry the person into fresh air. A person who is breathing but not awake is laid on their side (the recovery position) until help arrives.

Try it yourself

Try each one on your own first, then tap Show answer to check.