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Ha, 29, a nurse at Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital, was on a trip with three friends in Da Nang when the incident happened.
On March 22, while her group was enjoying a meal at a restaurant in Son Tra District, a 70-year-old Indian man inside the restaurant began showing signs of dizziness before falling unconscious. People inside the restaurant began screaming for help, thinking the man either had a stroke or a low blood sugar episode.
Ha’s instincts as a nurse kicked in and she sensed that the man had a cardiac arrest because he had lost consciousness too quickly. She checked for his pulse and found none, and the man had nearly stopped breathing.
Ha told people to let the man lie on the ground. But his wife did not understand Vietnamese and kept holding onto him.
"I stood from behind and brought the man to the ground. When I checked for his pulse again, I found none, and his heart had already stopped beating. I did chest compressions repeatedly and told everyone to dial 115. A while later, the patient began to breathe again," Ha said Wednesday.
Camera footage shows Ha resuscitating an Indian tourist who fainted at a restaurant in Da Nang.
The patient had a big stature and was sweating, making it difficult for Ha to do chest compressions. When his pulse returned and the man began to regain consciousness, Ha asked him if he was fine. When the man nodded back, Ha knew she had managed to save his life. His family said he had a history of hypertension and heart surgeries.
The man was later taken to hospital. Ha’s quick two-minute actions had helped him stay alive, as it would only take around 3-5 minutes with no circulation to render the brain dead.
"I think it was fate, because my flight was late, and so I went to the restaurant and incidentally saved the patient’s life," she said. Ha had been working at the A9 emergency center at Bach Mai for eight years.
Dao Xuan Co, director of the Bach Mai Hospital, said Ha’s acts showed the effectiveness of first-aid measures.
The hospital now has plans to cooperate with other units to provide first-aid training for firefighters, students and others, with the goal of equipping everyone with first-aid skills to ensure that anyone can be a first-responder before someone is taken to hospital.
Ha said she hoped to spread awareness of how important first-aid can be.
"Chest compressions, when taught, can be performed by anyone anywhere."
