Indian-origin Singaporean awarded for life-saving efforts

Singapore on Wednesday honoured a 58-year-old Indian-origin man with Public Spiritedness Award for his life-saving efforts to help an elderly unconscious Chinese man.

U Silvakumar, a military expert, put his life-saving instincts to pratice and used cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) process to help the Chinese man, who was lying unconscious near a temple, before the ambulance arrived on Sunday.

News of Silvakumar’s efforts made rounds online after a Facebook photo of him and other Hindu devotees helping the elderly man was posted on the social networking site. For his efforts, Silvakumar was honoured with the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) Public Spiritedness Award, the Channel News Asia reported.

In a Facebook post, SCDF said the group’s response was the “epitome of #CommunityFirstResponders”. “First at scene, first to render assistance. Community first response transcends all boundaries, and can be embraced by anyone and everyone,” it said.

Singaporean-Indian Hindus participate in fire-walking festivals called Theemithi, taking vows in exchange  for a wish or blessing from the goddess Draupadi every year. The fire-walking was held at Singapore’s oldest Hindu temples Sri Mariamman Temple at 1 am on Sunday.

CPR is an emergency procedure that combines chest compression often with artificial ventilation in an effort 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.