By Keith Upchurch
The Herald-Sun
DURHAM, N.C. — A woman was jogging with her fiancé in Durham when he collapsed from a heart attack, but she administered CPR and revived him.
First responders arrived and took over, but he might have died without her help.
Stories like that keep Capt. David Jacobs of the Durham Fire Department committed to a program that’s close to his heart: Training as many Durham residents as possible in CPR.
Jacobs has worked for the past five years to bring CPR training to high schools, public housing and other areas of Durham, and his efforts are paying off.
In 2010, Jacobs visited Seattle, Washington, and was amazed that their rate of saving heart attack victims was nearly 45 percent, compared to 5 percent in Durham and rest of North Carolina.
Jacobs knew Durham could do better.
He attended a resuscitation academy in Seattle and learned they had created a foundation called Medic One that paid for equipment and advanced training for their fire department’s emergency medical services (EMS) team.
That lit a fire under Jacobs, and he arranged for the foundation to sponsor the Durham Fire Department’s effort to expand CPR into the community.
“All the fundraising the Durham Fire Department does is sent to them (Seattle-based Medic One),” Jacobs said. “They put it in an account. There’s a one-time, 10 percent fee to manage it for us, and then they just pay bills as we buy things and train people.”
Durham signed a contract with Medic One in 2011 and began training the public the next year. So far, it has taught CPR to nearly 8,000 people, including Durham high school students who are required to complete the course to graduate.
Thirty-five CPR instructors, including city firefighters and Durham County paramedics, are showing people how to do chest compression and use a defibrillator on heart attack victims.
“We’re seeing more people doing CPR when we arrive at a scene,” Jacobs said.
The program keeps track of how many victims have their pulse restored, and the figures are impressive: It has improved from 12 percent when the program began to 51 percent in 2013.
“We plan to start holding a yearly survivors’ dinner so people can meet their rescuers and celebrate their life,” Jacobs said.
The Durham Fire Department responds to about 250 cardiac arrests a year, and figures show more Good Samaritans are stepping forward to help with chest compressions before first responders arrive.
“When we started, someone would help about 18 percent of the time,” Jacobs said. “Now it’s 20 to 25 percent.”
But in Seattle, it’s 70 percent, so Durham still has a long way to go, he said.
The department recently began offering CPR classes at the Durham Public Library. Learning the chest compression technique takes about 20 minutes, but the entire certification class, including how to use a defibrillator, lasts about four hours. There is no charge.
Meanwhile, Jacobs looks to Seattle as the standard he wants Durham to meet.
“When I saw how fantastic Seattle was, I knew Durham could do better,” he said. “I was jealous beyond words, and I asked myself: ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’”
Now that Durham is committed to CPR training for the community, Jacobs believes many hearts are beating that might otherwise have stopped.
“It’s gratifying to see the number of people we’ve trained increase,” he said, “and know that we’ve made a difference in someone’s life.”