Heart Assn. Wants You to Learn CPR

Spurred by the "woefully inadequate" number of cardiac arrest victims who receive CPR from a bystander—only 15% to 30%—the American Heart Association is calling for a push to increase and improve CPR training in the US, Reuters reports. The low CPR rate is an “enormous missed opportunity to save lives,” said an AHA doctor.

Communities with effective CPR training have raised survival rates of people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest associated with ventricular fibrillation from the national average, 6%, to as high as 74%, the association says. "Quick initiation of CPR, as well as providing high-quality CPR, is crucial to survival," the organization adds. (More heart attack stories.)