You never know when it might happen, but if someone has a heart attack, it's a great thing to know what to do.

A training program on cardiopulmonary resuscitation was launched in Shanghai recently, encouraging more people to master the life-saving skill.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a hands-on emergency procedure, which, when performed properly, can maintain circulatory flow and oxygenation in a cardiac arrest victim through chest compression and assisted ventilation.

More than 300 Shanghai residents learned CPR last weekend under the professional guidance of Life Support Training Center at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University.

The center, which is a member of the American Heart Association, offers basic life support courses that teach people how to perform CPR on adults, children and infants at the scene of an emergency.

So far, more than 3,000 medical staffers have been trained there, but the courses aren't just for health care staff - they're also for the public.

"We have done training in CPR before, but we think it's vital to expand this training to more residents, so they know how to do CPR in an emergency," said Wang Yi, president of Children's Hospital of Fudan University. Wang said the quicker CPR is given to a heart attack victim, the higher the survival rate.

In developed countries such as the US and Canada, many people have received onsite CPR training, and in some areas, the survival rate of heart attacks can reach 60 percent when CPR is performed in a timely fashion.

Almost 90 percent of China's residents have not received CPR training.

American Heart Association has 117 training centers in China, with 14 in Shanghai alone.

wanghongyi@chinadaily.com.cn