The dummy, created by advertising agency JOAN Creative, includes an attachment that allows the standard product to mimic a female body.
Called the WoManikan, the dummy has been created to encourage more people to administer CPR to women in public. A recent study by Duke University showed that a woman suffering from cardiac arrest in public is 27 per cent less likely to receive CPR than a man.JOAN's co-founder and chief creative officer Jaime Robinson said that their agency's goal is to achieve gender equality and that that includes the field of medical health." When we read about [the Duke University] study and this long-standing problem in the world of CPR, we saw a relatively simple way to help change things," she said."CPR manikins are designed to look like human bodies, but they actually represent less than half of our society.“The absence of women’s bodies in CPR training results in hesitation from bystanders, which in turn results in women being more likely to die in cardiac arrest. Our hope is that the WoManikin will bridge this gap in education and, ultimately, save many lives."JOAN launched the female dummy as part of CPR Awareness Week, which runs from June 1 to 7. The campaign will include a social media challenge across Instagram Stories where women place the heart emoji over their chests and include the hashtag '#GiveMeCPR.' The agency is also crowdsourcing more funds with the intention of creating 10 new attachments for the standard dummies. They have also made the patterns open source, so anyone can download them and create their own female-based CPR dummy. This is a significant step forward for women's healthcare, but one that has been long overdue.