American University of Antigua (AUA) College of Medicine, a division of Manipal Global Education Services, organized a week of first responder training sessions at Rajasthan University of Health Sciences (RUHS) in Jaipur and Rabindra Nath Tagore (RNT) College of Medical Sciences in Udaipur Rajasthan, India.

From April 18th to 22nd, first responders, including fire fighters, policemen, and EMTs, were trained in Advance Life Support, CPR, and First Aid. Instruction was led by faculty from AUA’s Emergency Medicine Training Centre (EMTC): Vernon Solomon, Director; Marlon Destin, Manager; and Dr. Courtney Lewis, Assistant Director, Instructor for Clinical Medicine, and Campus Physician.

This event was the first of its kind and was made possible by the active support of the Honorable Home Minister of Rajasthan, Gulab Chand Kataria and his Special Advisor, Mahendra Parakh, who were highly appreciative of this new initiative.

“Those who participated in these rigorous lessons, having received immersive training in effective emergency response, will potentially save millions of lives,” Kataria said.

“AUA is very happy to contribute to this initiative by providing knowledge and instruction to first responders” said Par Prem Kumar, Advisor to the President of AUA.

Dr. Ajay Lodha, President-Elect of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, who travelled from New York to his home state Rajasthan to be part of this event and express his appreciation of the program, argued that, “with the active support of the Government of Rajasthan, first responder training supervised by AUA must be done in all parts of the state and across the nation in an effort to save many of the innocent lives that are needlessly lost in road accidents and other emergencies.”

AUA’s EMTC faculty hope to return to Rajasthan to train a team of instructors that will in turn, lead future sessions of first responder training.