A person drops unconscious in front of you in a restaurant; or you witness a car accident. Your response in that critical time before an ambulance arrives can save lives. But what if you don’t know what to do? That’s what Saving 9 is here for.
Saving 9 was founded by Usama- a Fulbright Scholar who returned to his home country after completing his Master’s in Education from Columbia University.
Usama underwent his initial First Aid Training during undergraduate years and since then found a passion in the idea of saving the lives of people. Usama continued to pursue his passion while at Columbia and completed the New York State’s Emergency Response Program. Realizing the importance of First Aid Training, and the lack of knowledge in his home country, Usama started imparting First Aid skills to his friends and family.
With a passion to do more for his country, where many lives are lost daily due to patient mishandling in critical circumstances, Usama founded Saving 9 – a startup aiming to empower individuals as frontline responders for emergency situations.
Saving 9 trains individuals through a two-month extensive program using real life simulations. The trainees not only learn the right response strategies, but also how to emotionally cope with unexpected critical situations.
Taking inspiration from other countries, Saving 9 has started conducting First Aid workshops in high schools and is actively working to embed first aid into the curriculum of primary classes. Starting with private schools, now the First Aid curriculum is also taught in NGO run schools in underprivileged communities.
Saving 9 has run several pilot projects in far flung areas which do not have access to hospitals nearby. The team has trained community members as first responders and has educated them on the essentials of medical care. The team has also trained female responders which has had a positive impact on many communities.
Partnering with local and international organizations, Saving 9 has averted hundreds of emergencies so far and has received grants from Harvard University and Columbia Business School. Currently it is collaborating with Aga Khan University to scale and expand into more communities.
The long-term vision of Saving 9 is to create an integrated ambulance service that brings together all available ambulance services across Pakistan for efficient coverage of emergency situations. For this purpose, Saving9 has also launched its own ambulance service.
The opportunity to interact with fellow entrepreneurs and access to mentors at the NIC has enabled the Saving9 team to think beyond boundaries and turn its vision into reality.
Saving9 is changing the mindset around first response.
