Regular exercise is essential for keeping fit and avoiding health problems. Unfortunately, a healthy lifestyle is not always enough to avoid tragedy, particularly cardiac incidents. In our country, for example, we remember the recent death of Cédric Roussel,former Belgian international player, who suffered a heart attack while sitting on a café terrace.
Aware that these tragedies don’t just happen to other people, the municipality of Boussu has officially become a partner of Haert Heroes. ‘The Ladbrokes Foundation has offered to make Boussu a partner municipality in the field of effective intervention in the event of cardiac arrest in sporting circles’, explains Mayor Jean-Claude Debiève (PS). ‘Cardiac arrests on sports fields are becoming more and more frequent: more or less 10 sportsmen and women under the age of 25 are victims in Belgium every year.’
Two lines of action
And interventions, using automatic defibrillators, are sometimes late or absent, usually due to a lack of training in their use or the absence of an effective intervention process. ‘The ‘Heart heroes’ initiative adopted by Boussu local authority is designed to be a pragmatic solution to two problems: the tragedy and sometimes the evasion of responsibility.’
Operation Heart Heroes will focus on two areas. The first will be to identify the locations of defibrillators in a fun way, to avoid wasting crucial time. ‘This is one of the great weaknesses of sports centres: you have to ask yourself where the defibrillator is and how you use it. By the time you think about it, in a panic, it’s often already too late. We therefore need to train the ‘resource’ people designated by the club and/or sports centre in how to use it quickly and effectively’.
In practice, defibrillation training will be organised at the sites of Boussu’s sports clubs. In other words, at the Boussu sports hall, the Hornu sports hall, the Grand-Hornu local school, the Foyer Moderne local school, and the RLC Hornu and RFB stadiums. The clubs involved in this preventive project are the Royal Leopold Club de Hornu, the RFB, the CLub Boussu Gym, the New Basket club de Boussu, the tennis Club d’Hornu, the judo club du grand Hornu, the karate wado-ryu Club d’Hornu, the karate shuto club de Boussu, the hall omnisports de Boussu and its resident clubs as well as the hall omnisports d’Hornu and its resident clubs.
The Boussu local authority’s sports, prevention and emergency planning departments are involved in implementing the project on the ground.
Source: La DH, Emeline Berlier, 17 November 2023