ACT Foundation achieves milestone: More than one million students trained in CPR Program

Nov 27 2009

The Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation is thrilled to announce that more than one million Ontario high school students have now been trained in the lifesaving ACT High School CPR Program - an unprecedented milestone.

Nationally, ACT has trained 1.4 million youth - and this number is growing quickly.

"This is a major milestone and we are so pleased to share the news of ACT's ongoing success right where the program started - in Ottawa," said Sandra Clarke, Executive Director of the ACT Foundation. "We are creating a generation of lifesavers. Each year across Canada 250,000 high school students in 1,350 high schools receive this lifesaving training from their teachers."

The ACT Foundation is a national, award-winning charitable organization driving a national campaign to establish CPR training in high schools across Canada. ACT raises funds to donate mannequins, teacher training, manuals and other materials to schools and guides them in program set-up to ensure long-term sustainability of the program. Teachers train their students as a regular part of the curriculum. Core partners behind ACT's national campaign are AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada, Pfizer Canada and sanofi-aventis.

With support from the Government of Ontario, the ACT Foundation is now adding Automated External Defibrillator (AED) training and AEDs for schools as an enhancement to the CPR program.

"We want to thank the Government of Ontario and The Ontario Trillium Foundation for their long-standing support of this important program," said Sandra Clarke. "It is because of the support from our committed partners at the community, provincial and national level that we have achieved this incredible success."

Source: Advanced Coronary Treatment Foundation