Teaching adults how to perform CPR
Today marks the day Singapore fell to the Japanese 80 years ago in 1942. The Straits Times' Lim Min Zhang speaks with five people who have gone beyond the call of duty to strengthen Total Defence - introduced in 1984 - to emphasise how every Singaporean plays a part in the country's defence.
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In his years of teaching adults how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), Mr Venod Kesavan found that many of them do so because they have lost a loved one, or experienced a close shave.
The freelance life support and first aid instructor, 35, has seen his fair share of people who were moved to action by tragedy since he started teaching professionally in 2010.
He said: "I had one class where all of them were golfers, and they came because they lost one of their friends on the golf course.
"So knowing both the stories with happy and sad endings, that keeps me going now."
In 2015, he joined the myResponder app as a first responder. This means he is alerted by the Singapore Civil Defence Force to people within a 400m radius who need help before a paramedic can get there.
He has responded to about seven cases.
A memorable incident was when he was called to help an older woman trying to perform CPR on her husband in their home.
Her sense of relief was palpable when she saw help arriving, because she was exhausted and her efforts at CPR were not effective, said Mr Kesavan.
"It really brought home why as a community, we need to be there for one another."
