It was a late Sunday afternoon, and I had observed the clouds were getting darker, and the heavy rain was impending. Even as I was enjoying the long walk, a hobby that served as an ideal reboot for me mentally, I quickly reversed my course.

However, the loud and fervent prayers from five middle-aged women and a man I assume is in his late 20s caught my attention. They had encircled a teenager rolling on the floor with frothy oral secretions. My training in first aid came in handy, and I quickly assessed the boy was experiencing a tonic-clonic seizure.

Interestingly, the six people had the impression this was a demonic attack on the teenager. With alacrity, I introduced myself and asked them for help to clear away stones and sharp objects that could cut him as he rolled aggressively on the muddy ground.

I requested clothes from three of the women, folded them to form a cushion for his head as he jerked rhythmically. After, I quickly turned him to the recovery position, loosened his belt and clothes, emptied his pockets, and took off his shoes. Clearly, he was returning from church as I spotted a sizeable Bible on the ground around him.

After four minutes, the seizure stopped, but he remained in the recovery position. The pastor said his last prayer, thanking God, and after 20 minutes the young man had recovered from the episode.

The stigma attached to such seizures and the spiritual lens through which it is seen by some does not sit well with me. This is caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain and not by sorcery.

In my tense reflections at home, it dawned on me how crucial first aid training is. I also reflected on the gaps created by its absence in our school curricula from basic school to tertiary.

To be candid, it was my first aid skills that saved the boy who I later discovered is called Kofi. What would have been his fate if I never had that walk? He could have choked and developed other serious complications.

What if it had happened while he was in school, playing with his peers? Or at the Sunday school, where little is known about first aid?

Appreciating John Locke's philosophy of "Tabula Rasa", I believe the time is opportune for us as a people to re-evaluate the content of our school curricula. We must make first aid training and education a compulsory part of it on all levels of education. Having a high illiteracy rate is flattering as a country, and such is our status as a very religious country. However, our educational system has to shift significantly in imparting useful knowledge.

Policy and decision-makers must consider making First Aid Education/Training an integral part of primary, secondary, and tertiary education.

This will be empowering to the youth—saving lives, reducing the severity of illnesses and injuries, increasing workplace and school safety, reducing healthcare costs, and strengthening the emergency system nationwide.

The Bible states in Proverbs 22:6 that
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Indeed, this will be a step in the right direction for the Ministry of Education to make first aid training a compulsory part of school curricula.

A partnership between the Ministry of Education and the National Ambulance Service would now be crucial to this agenda. Austria, Norway, Australia, the UK, among several others, have adopted this policy and are already seeing significant changes.

In the quest of achieving the reset agenda, this will be revolutionary. Among the several new policies introduced to bring major shifts in the education sector, this will certainly go a long way to make the ministry and its policymakers paladins of great nation-building.

I hope this receives the urgency it requires.

Long Live Mother Ghana.