Immersion Therapeutic Recompression, the body of the poor

"Poverty and death go hand in hand" but poverty and disability don't go hand in hand at all.

Throughout the intertropical zone, many fishermen use diving to catch fish, to collect sea cucumbers and shellfish. Others dive to cut up wrecks and recover salable materials.

These poor divers do not know anything about diving. They are victims of many accidents that they live as a fatality.

Divers of the World et THEAFEPS (Francophone Association for Mutual Aid and Promotion of Life Sciences) intervene in a training program for these divers In Vietnam, since 2009.

Two training axes are developed

1. Technical training in underwater activity provided by Divers of the World.

These divers / fishermen dive daily to more than 40m three per day (during the season) and have no theoretical knowledge of the mechanisms of diving and the risks that result from it.

Our role is therefore to provide these fishermen / divers with scuba diving technique and to give them stheoretical bases which are lacking and lead to many accidents ...

2. THEAFEPS as for herself des volunteer fishermen and divers to teach others to:

• PREVENTING accidents and taking care of them, when they occur, by RTI (Therapeutic Recompression by Immersion under Oxygen, by the protocol, called CLIPPERTON).This technique has been was set up in 2005 by Jean Eric BLATTEAU for the Jean Louis ETIENNE expedition

• PREVENTION because it is enough to teach that the accident of desaturation is not inevitable, but that it is avoidable, simply, by decreasing a little the time spent at the bottom, the number of daily dives and, above all, going back slowly and making a landing. They still have to have instruments, which is why you can drop off your needle depth gauges that you no longer use at our stand A03 at the next diving fair.

• COVERAGE because during a desaturation accident they must be able to call on a boat fitted with RTI equipment, namely: a 40-liter industrial oxygen cylinder, a pressure regulator, a 15-meter hose and a nitrox octopus. This set is inexpensive and easy to maintain.

Since 2009 :

• Thirty-two rescue divers have been trained by AFEPS.

• Fifteen fishermen / divers receive training (FSGT / CMAS) scuba diver. (October 2012) Next mission April 2014.

This technique seems to be of interest to other countries such as Madagascar for example. But this requires a lot of human and financial investment.

You want to know more ? Do you want to get involved as a voluntary supervisor? Come and meet us on our stand at the Porte de Versailles diving fair.

Louis REBBOH President of Divers of the World