Knife Angel's first aid message delivered
First aid trainer Simon Heys helped to save the life of a man suffering severe blood loss with specialist gauze used by soldiers in war zones.
He came to the rescue after stopping at the scene of a car crash on the M6 near Birmingham to find the passenger with a deep wound to his leg, losing huge amounts of blood from an artery.
“He was bleeding quite profusely. It was not dissimilar to a knife wound. I packed it with the Celox Rapid gauze and applied pressure. It’s modified to work quickly to stop the flow of blood.
“It is by far the most effective treatment I have ever come across,” said Simon, of Heys First Aid, who was speaking at a Celox Medical equipment demo organised by Telford medical firm SP Services.
They were in Telford where the iconic 27ft tall Knife Angel statue made of 100,000 blunted knives stood to tell the story of a different sort of war zone in which 2,474 mainly boys and young men have died of stab wounds in the UK in 11 years from 2007 to 2018.
Simon Leggett, managing director of SP Services whose Hortonwood company was one of the sponsors to help bring the statue to Telford, said: “This amazing sculpture of tens of thousands of knives handed in to police gives a giant message about the tragedy of the UK’s knife crime epidemic which has resulted in the loss of so many young lives.
“We asked Simon to come to our stand to show first aiders and members of the public how they can help save lives too if they are on the scene of an incident with people injured.
“He demonstrated how to use the Celox Rapid haemostatic dressing on larger wounds and the method of using chitosan derivative granules, through injecting it into a deep wound, to rapidly form an artificial clot.”
