First aid is a founding activity of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Over the years, its field of intervention has expanded to meet the new needs of society. From emergency situations to day-to-day rescue, including training the general public in life-saving gestures and risk reduction, the French Red Cross is involved in all days with citizens to provide an appropriate response.
Approved by civil security, the French Red Cross contributes to the health coverage of public events by setting up provisional emergency measures (DPS). These devices are provided by volunteer first responders, almost all volunteers, whose main missions are to protect, rescue and alert. In some departments, it also supports public emergency services by intervening on the public highway or at home thanks to its emergency network. In 2021, no less than 4,780 first aid stations and 8,600 prompt rescue operations were carried out by the 9,157 first aid volunteers from association. In addition, the French Red Cross, in first aid, also trains thousands of people each year.
Today only 49% of French people believe they know life-saving behavior and only 40% of the population is trained in first aid gestures and this is not enough. Knowing how to anticipate, prepare and avoid dangers, but also knowing how to react and practice the right actions can save lives. The citizen is the first link in the rescue chain, in 9 out of 10 emergency situations, it is the life of a loved one that is at stake. For the French Red Cross, 80% of the population must be trained in the gestures that save. In 2021, the association trained and initiated 68,000 people in first aid gestures La Poste and the French Red Cross partners since 1914 Since 2006, more than 27 million euros have been donated by La Poste to the French Red Cross in order to finance numerous international, national or local actions carried out in the field of health, humanitarian and social action.
The repayment of this surcharge has contributed to the implementation of numerous French Red Cross projects in various fields of activity, including:
- The rise in power of first aid actions, either by the creation of the first aid activity strictly speaking (as in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) or by the modernization of equipment (in Lens for example), but also for allow the French Red Cross network to renew its equipment and renovate its premises intended for training in life-saving gestures
- The deployment of itinerant devices throughout France with Croix-Rouge sur Roues, a multi-service structure reaching out to vulnerable populations who do not have the means to travel to the fixed units of the association.
- The development of support systems related to hygiene, so important for self-esteem. For example, the solidarity laundry (which aims
