New Jersey – Each year, a symptomless heart condition kills 75 student athletes across the nation.
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On Thursday, New Jersey Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan introduced a bill to have teens tested that could save countless lives.
The legislation was spurred by the death of two athletes in Middlesex County.
Sixteen-year-old Nyasia Sherrod has been on a mission to make the public aware of a heart condition that killed her big brother, Kittim.
“It’s very important so that people don’t have to go through the same pain we’re going through,” Nyasia Sherrod said.
Kittim Sherrod, who was a star football player at Edison High School, suddenly collapsed and died during track practice a year ago. He was only 17 years old.
“Our world just seemed to end that day,” Nyasia Sherrod said.
What she and her family didn’t know was that the popular athlete had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – or an enlarged heart.
Nyasia was a huge part of the effort to put the state bill together. The measure requires better screening at all New Jersey schools of student athletes before their first practice or game.
“I just asked him to please help my family out and pass the bill,” she said.
The bill would also require all students and staff in New Jersey schools to know CPR and to have defibrillators.
“If it can save one kid’s life, it’s absolutely worth every dime and every effort,” Edison High Principal Salvatore Mistretta said.
Awareness is a main part of the bill. Unusual fatigue, Nyasia has found, is a symptom of this silent killer.
“He would go to work, go to school and still be on the track team, football and doing million things at the same time,” she said.
“He had scholarship offers and we wanted him to go to the next step, go to college and get a good education,” football coach Chris Pagano said.
“He would have gone to college and graduated and played for the NFL,” Nyasia added.
Because Sherrod died during track practice this past Sunday family, friends and teammates walked the path he ran to spot where he collapsed. They’ll be doing this every year to remember him and to celebrate his life.
The assemblyman sponsoring the bill said he’s confident the measure will pass when the Assembly is back in session in July.
If someone who is required by law to learn CPR, refuses to perform CPR on someone in need, are they criminally liable if the person dies? What if they perform it incorrectly and injure the patient, or they perform it correctly, but the patient dies anyway … is that person at fault and, therefore, subject to prosecution or civil suit? If passed, this law would trigger the Law of Unintended Consequences like nobody’s business.
How about every חדר ans school in ny should have a emt and a defibrillator on promise c”v if something happens
Great Idea, they should do it in NY as well. When we were kids First Aid was a required course in HS. When was it stopped?
It’s a nice thing for a person to know CPR, but goverment needs to just stop adding laws and laws and laws, where will this end?
Well it’s a great idea instead of the silly stuff we learned in health class but it should be CCR not CPR. CCR is a new technique that doesn’t rerquire mouth to mouth but relies instead on constant chest compressions, hence the name,CCR. It’s actually not a “new” technique but has not been taught to the general public previously.
Wow! What an outrage! What has this world come to. We always knew that school was designed to teach us the three “R’s”, namely Reading, Righting, and Rithmatic. For anyone to have the audacity to introduce the teaching of new concepts such as CPR is totally ridiculous! Are our children not pressured enough with the current curriculum that we need to add more topics to their agenda? Isn’t the Hatzoloh organization doing a fantastic job in saving our lives? Why start creating a competition to their Holy work? I thing we should protest this lunatic idea and do anything possible to assure that new courses such as CPR should be kept as the choice of the individual students – and not a mandated course to students overall. This idea is nothing more than “Atzas HaYeitzer!”
Why do you need a bill.
Don’t we have health classes anymore? Just make it part of the curriculum! Seems like an esy solution!