It’s a well-known fact that levels of obesity are growing at an alarming rate, not only in the UK, but globally.
As rescuers, are your teams prepared and confident in your abilities to successful extract and manoeuvre a larger individual, ensuring both their, and your own safety?
The figures
According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity in 195 Countries over 25 years, more than 603 million adults and 107 million children are obese.
Whilst the UK does not appear in the top 10 of most obese countries, (we actually come in 43rd on the list) with 26.9% of the populations classed as obese, statistics collected from the UK Fire and rescue Service shows that bariatric rescues have increased from 709 in 2012-13 to 944 in 2015-16.
With this increase in obesity, what training can you and your staff do to ensure the safety of the person you are helping, and yourself?
When Bigger is better
At Ruth Lee we have reacted to the obesity crisis and created a range of bariatric manikins. Weighing in at 90, 180 or 260kgs they were designed after requests from customers who needed to train to manoeuvre larger people in the safest way possible.
These manikins have been designed to provide a bulky and realistic fluidity of movement and the 90kg bariatric manikin is the perfect choice where your training requires the bulk of a bariatric without too much excessive weight.
New Product
We are pleased to be able to introduce a new Bariatric training tool to our range!
Our Water-Fillable Bariatric Suit allows one trainer to transport the suit and a manikin in their own car and carry it into position to create a training scenario all on their own! The suit comes in a carry holdall with all attachments and weighs just 7kg.
In the video, our UK Sales Manager Stuart Cheetham can be seen lifting the suit, plus a 30kg manikin and placing the equipment into his car. Looks pretty straightforward!
Once in position, dress the manikin in the suit, attach the hose and using the provided water-flow meter, measure how much water/weight is added. Remember, one litre of water is one kilo in weight! Up to 150 kg of additional weight can be added using water – giving you a true bariatric patient.
Once the training is complete, you simply empty the suit using the two valves situated on the hip and trunk of the manikin, either using a hosepipe, or if you’re outside, just release the valves and the water quickly drains away. It really couldn’t be easier!
Our feedback on this product so far has been excellent with our testers especially keen on the ‘feel’ of the manikin. Using water, the suit has a fluidity of movement which is very much like human flesh. The material used is an extremely high specification Trilaminate of Cordura /Butyl/ Polyester fabric. This combination makes it fully waterproof, but more importantly, very hard-wearing and flexible. It is also more ‘slippery’ and cannot be ‘grabbed’ making it much more realistic in a training scenario – after all you wouldn’t grab a real person’s skin!
Our experts are on hand to offer advice on which bariatric training product would best suit your team’s requirements.
If you are based in the UK and would like a FREE demonstration of these products, call our UK Sales Manager Stuart Cheetham today on 01490 413 282 or email stuart@ruthlee.com