TER0046

Written evidence submitted by Rapaid Emergency Bandages

 

  1. About Rapaid - Rapaid aims to make the life-saving potential of bandages as ubiquitous as other forms of life-saving equipment, such as fire extinguishers and defibrillators, to minimise the consequences of potentially devastating injuries and prevent people from bleeding to death after and attack or injury.
  2. The Manchester Arena inquiry found that some of the victims involved in the terror attack at the arena bled to death while waiting for first responders to arrive at the scene with life-saving equipment. Some of those people may have lived had live-saving bandages been available to enable others to slow the bleeding long enough for medical help to arrive.
  3. Having the means available to prevent people from bleeding out could save lives after many kinds of terror attacks, including explosions, IEDs, vehicle as a weapon attacks and knife attacks.
  4. It only takes 3 minutes for a casualty to bleed to death, so rapidly deployable, easy-to-use equipment is vital.
  5. While the focus on the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill is on helping events and venues prepare for a potential attack with improved training, processes, and physical protection, we believe that this is also a legislative opportunity to bring into force mandatory first aid equipment that can be deployed with little or no training at the site of injury, gaining life-saving minutes for victims while first responders arrive.
  6. We therefore ask the Select Committee to consider:
    1. A mandatory requirement for events and venues to have bandage kits on site and for these to be clearly visible to members of the public, members of staff and first responders.
    2. For these kits to be designed with ease of use in mind to ensure that anyone can use them with no medical training.
    3. For the kits to be serviced and inspected in a similar way to fire extinguishers.
    4. For companies providing counter terrorism equipment, such as hostile vehicle mitigation systems, for example, to provide first aid bandage kits as part of their site set-up and supervision.

 

June 2023