Most emergencies on a campus are survived or lost in the minutes before anyone with training arrives. That is not a dramatic claim, it is a description of geography. An ambulance has to be called, dispatched and driven, and for that entire period the only people present are the ones who were already there. On a Gambian campus, at a hall of residence, at a bus stop on the way to lectures, that means students.
This is a checklist, not a course. It covers what a person with no medical training can safely do while help is on the way and, just as importantly, what to leave alone. Read it once now, while nothing is happening, because nobody learns this during the event itself. If cost is the reason you have not yet done a first-aid course or bought a kit, a small daily income covers both: I am Beezy pays for each piece of content you view, settled to your local payment method.
Nothing here replaces training from the Gambia Red Cross Society or another recognised provider. Take the course when you can. Until then, these are the actions that do the most good with the least risk of causing harm.
The first minute: what you do before anything else
Make the scene safe before you touch anyone
The second casualty of a road accident is often the person who ran into the road to help. Before you approach, look for whatever caused the injury and whether it is still there: traffic, a live electrical wire, fire, water, a collapsed structure, someone violent. If it is still dangerous, you do not go in. A second casualty does not double the help available, it halves it. It also pulls the responders' attention away from the person who needed it first.
Check response and breathing, in that order
Speak loudly and ask whether they can hear you. Tap the shoulders. If there is no response, look at the chest for movement and listen for breath for no more than ten seconds. Someone who responds and is breathing needs monitoring and a phone call. Someone unresponsive but breathing needs to be turned onto their side so the airway stays clear. Someone unresponsive and not breathing needs chest compressions, started immediately rather than after further checking.
Send a specific person to call
In a crowd, a general shout for someone to call for help produces nothing, because every person present assumes somebody else has done it. Point at one individual, describe them out loud — the man in the blue shirt, you — and give the instruction directly. Then ask that person to come back and confirm the call was made. This single habit is the difference between help genuinely being on the way and everyone believing that it is.
Who do you call, and what do you say?
Know the numbers before you need them
Save the emergency numbers in your phone today, under a name that sorts to the top of your contacts, and write them on the inside of your hall door as well, because phones get lost, break and run flat at exactly the wrong moment. Get the current numbers from your campus clinic, your hall administration or the Ministry of Health rather than from an old poster on a wall, since they do change and an out-of-date number costs you the minutes you cannot spare. Keep the direct line of the nearest hospital beside them.
What the dispatcher needs, in order
Give the location first, in a form a driver can use: not the name students use for a building, but the road, the landmark, the gate. Then say what happened, how many people are hurt, whether they are conscious and whether they are breathing. Then your own name and the number you are calling from. Do not end the call until you are told to, because you may be given instructions to carry out while you wait.
Prepare the arrival
Send someone to the gate or the roadside to flag the vehicle down and lead it in. Unlock whatever needs unlocking, clear a path, move the crowd back. Collect anything the responders will ask for: what the person took, what they are allergic to, any medicine box or medical card in their bag. On a campus at night, one person waving at the right junction saves more time than anything else you can do while waiting.
The checklist, situation by situation
How to use this table
Each row gives the one thing that matters most while you wait and the one thing people most often get wrong. Learn the third column especially, because the second is usually instinct and the third usually is not.
| Situation | Do this while waiting | Mistake to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy bleeding | Press hard on the wound with a clean cloth and keep pressing; raise the limb if you can | Lifting the cloth to look, which restarts the bleeding |
| Choking, unable to speak | Firm back blows between the shoulder blades, then abdominal thrusts | Reaching blindly into the mouth |
| Unresponsive but breathing | Roll onto the side and tilt the head back so the airway stays open | Leaving them flat on their back |
| Not breathing | Chest compressions, hard and fast in the centre of the chest | Stopping repeatedly to check |
| Burn | Cool under clean running water for a sustained period, then cover loosely | Ice, oil, toothpaste or butter on the burn |
| Suspected broken bone | Support the limb as you found it and keep the person still | Straightening it or loading them into a car |
| Fainting or heat collapse | Move into shade, lie flat, raise the legs, sips of water once fully alert | Giving fluids to someone not fully awake |
| Seizure | Clear hard objects away, cushion the head, note how long it lasts | Restraining them or putting anything in the mouth |
Heat and dehydration deserve their own line
In the hottest part of the dry season, and during Ramadan when many students fast through long days, collapse from heat and dehydration is one of the most likely things you will actually meet. Move the person into shade, loosen tight clothing, cool the skin with water and moving air, and get help if they do not recover quickly or if their skin is hot and dry rather than sweating. Someone confused, or who cannot be roused properly, is an emergency and not a rest case.
What belongs in a kit you will actually carry
The pocket kit and the hall kit
A kit that lives in a cupboard on the other side of campus is not a kit. Split it in two: a small pouch that stays in your bag, and a larger box in the hall or shared kitchen whose location everybody knows without asking. The pouch deals with bleeding and cleaning; the box holds everything that needs volume or space.
| Item | Pouch | Hall box | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sterile gauze and clean dressings | Yes | Yes | Pressure on a bleed, covering a wound |
| Roller bandage | Yes | Yes | Holds the dressing, frees your hands |
| Disposable gloves | Yes | Yes | Protects both of you |
| Antiseptic wipes or solution | Yes | Yes | Cleaning before covering |
| Assorted adhesive plasters | Yes | Yes | Small wounds that would get infected |
| Scissors and tape | No | Yes | Cutting clothing away from an injury |
| Oral rehydration salts | Yes | Yes | Dehydration, the commonest campus case |
| Emergency foil blanket | No | Yes | Shock and cold after an incident |
| Written numbers and a torch | Yes | Yes | Works when the phone does not |
Check it twice a term
Everything in a kit expires, dries out or gets borrowed and never returned. Put a date on the box, check it at the start and the middle of every term, and replace whatever has gone. Write on the lid who checked it last. A kit that belongs to nobody is a kit nobody restocks, and you find that out on the night it matters.
What not to keep in it
Leave out other people's prescription medicine and anything you have not been trained to use. Giving somebody else's medication to a person in distress can turn a manageable situation into a serious one, and it makes you responsible for whatever follows. The kit exists to stop bleeding, protect wounds, treat dehydration and buy time.
Paying for the training and the kit with I am Beezy
Usually a money problem, not a willingness problem
Ask students why they have never done a first-aid course and the honest answer is rarely indifference. It is that the course fee and the kit compete with transport, data and food during a term when everything is already stretched. Naming that clearly is the first step to solving it, because a small predictable amount arriving regularly solves this particular problem far better than a lump sum you never happen to have spare.
A daily stream that fits around lectures
The app pays for content you view — videos, articles, advertisements — and settles what you earn to the local payment method you already use. Between lectures, on the transport in, in the evening when the network is good: it fits into gaps rather than demanding a slot in your timetable. Set what accumulates aside for the course fee and the kit specifically, and both become affordable inside a single term.
Split the hall box across the hall
The shared box is the obvious thing to fund collectively. Ten students each contributing a small amount equip a box that serves everyone on the floor, and the same group can book a course together, which providers frequently price better than individual places. Ask them. The worst outcome is a no.
What should you never do?
The three actions that most often make things worse
Do not move someone who may have injured their neck or back unless leaving them where they are would kill them. Do not give food or drink to anyone who is drowsy, confused or who may need surgery. Do not put anything into the mouth of a person having a seizure. Every one of these feels helpful in the moment, which is precisely why they keep happening, and every one causes harm.
Do not let a crowd form
A crowd blocks air, blocks access and generates a dozen contradictory instructions at once. Ask people firmly to step back, and give individuals a job — waiting at the gate, holding a phone torch, fetching the hall kit, keeping the path clear. People with a task stop crowding; people without one never will, however politely you ask.
Do not disappear afterwards
Hand over properly when help arrives: what you found, what you did, at what time, and anything the person or their bag told you. Then stay until somebody tells you that you are no longer needed. And check on yourself in the days afterwards, because dealing with a serious incident affects the people who helped, and your campus counselling service exists for that too.
Turning one trained student into a prepared hall
Three people, not one
Aim for at least three trained people per hall, on different floors and with different timetables, so that somebody competent is present at most hours. One trained student who happens to be in a lecture when it happens is, at that moment, exactly the same as none at all.
Practise the boring part
The part that fails under pressure is never the bandaging. It is knowing where the kit is, who to call, and how to describe the location to somebody who has never been to your campus. Walk it through once a term: one person calls out a scenario, a second fetches the kit, a third states the location the way they would give it to a dispatcher. Ten minutes, twice a term, and it stops being something you have to think about.
You will not remember all of this on the day. You will remember three things: make the scene safe, point at one person and send them to call, and press hard on a bleed and keep pressing. Everything else is a bonus. Book the course, split the cost of a hall kit with your floor, write the numbers somewhere a flat battery cannot delete them, and if the fee is genuinely what stands in the way, an income you can build in the gaps of a term — such as I am Beezy — removes that obstacle within weeks.
