MSP Kenny Gibson has hailed a successful government scheme which saw over 60,000 people across Scotland given life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training in 2016.

The MSP for Cunninghame North praised Scotland’s Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy which aims to save 1,000 extra lives over five years and equip an additional half a million people with CPR skills.

The scheme has been developed in collaboration with more than a dozen organisations, including emergency services and the voluntary sector to improve out-of-hospital cardiac arrest outcomes.

CPR is an emergency procedure that combines chest compression, often with artificial ventilation, to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who is in cardiac arrest. It is essential where someone is unresponsive with no breathing or abnormal breathing

Mr Gibson said: “Each year in Scotland there is around 3,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.

“Cardiac arrest is when a person’s heart completely stops and, if this happens, CPR must be administered within minutes or the person will probably die. That is why CPR training and education is so vitally important.”