Brasília, June 24, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - According to estimates by the Brazilian Cardiology Society (SBC), heart ailments kill around 800 Brazilians every day. 65% of these deaths occur suddenly, that is, so quickly that the patient expires before reaching the hospital. To alter this reality, the organization launched the campaign "Time is Life." The goal is to train people to help victims of heart attacks, the chief cause of sudden death.

"We want to train the population to become familiar with the first signs of heart attack, stroke, and obstruction and the treatment of cardiorespiratory arrest. As well as to use a device called a defibrillator, which transmits a shock to the heart," affirms the physician, Manoel Canesin, coordinator of the SBC's Study Group on Ressuscitation and Cardiovascular Emergencies.

According to the SBC, cardiovascular diseases kill around 300 thousand people per year in Brazil. According to the organization, 82% of heart arrests occur at home and, 60% of the time, the only other person present is a child or adolescent. "All schools must provide instruction on how to save a patient who is having a heart attack," Canesin argues.

"I believe that, in ten years at the most, we shall find defibrillators the way we find fire extinguishers, that is, we shall treat sudden death the way it should be treated," the physician observes.

He explains that in the United States, where the use of defibrillators is more common, in every 100 heart attack victims, 60 survive. In Brazil, only 2 in every 100 manage to escape sudden death.

Reporter: Irene Lôbo
Translator: David Silberstein