On Thursday afternoon, a life and health safety education class took place at Jinhui Experimental School's summer care program in the Minhang district of Shanghai. Fan Qin, a volunteer from the Nightingale Red Cross Voluntary Nursing Service Team, visited the classroom and shared self-protection and first-aid knowledge with the children.

Fan Qin, a volunteer from the Nightingale Red Cross Voluntary Nursing Service Team, gave a self-protection and first-aid class to students at Jinhui Experimental School's summer care program in the Minhang district of Shanghai. (Photo: Chen Yida/chinadaily.com.cn)

To help kids better understand the knowledge, Fan created a mnemonic rhyme for each hazard. She also encouraged students to perform in front of the class to simulate an emergency situation. For example, she asked a girl to imitate the symptoms of choking.

The students learned how to cope with different threats including airway obstruction, drowning, burns, bleeding, elevator malfunctions and stampedes. At the end of the class, students unanimously answered "keep our heads down" if nose-bleeding occurs.

According to Fan, first-aid knowledge allows children to deal with emergencies calmly and correctly, which will greatly reduce mortality and injury rates.

So far, Red Cross health safety education has covered the city's 16 districts, provided by 90 volunteers from the team.

Colleges are also collaborating with the Red Cross Society of China Shanghai to include life health safety education in their freshman military training.