The Red Cross Society of China, the country's biggest humanitarian organization, is launching a new initiative to improve the public's skills in first aid and emergency response.

Zhao Baige, executive vice-president of the society, unveiled the plan on Friday to mark World First Aid Day, and said the program is aiming to raise the percentage of people in China with training in the skills from the current 1 percent to 1.5 percent.

"Being able to tend to yourself or others during emergencies helps save lives and reduce injuries, and we consider it our responsibility to instruct the public in the skills they need," she said.

With just 1 percent of the population already trained, China compares poorly with a world average of 30 percent, statistics from the society show, despite being a country prone to natural disasters.

Statistics show that some 1.2 million emergency situations occur annually, resulting in at least 200,000 deaths and more than 1.5 million serious injuries.

Wang Ping, director of the society's relief and health department, added that many of those losses could have been avoided with better public training.

The society will primarily provide training to staff of special occupations like transportation and mining, but also school staff and pupils.

But Wang conceded that money is a major issue for "sustainable implementation" of such a program, and urged that government to become more involved in paying the society for further training for other areas of society, which currently happens in some cities including Beijing and Shanghai.

Lu Shijie, deputy director of the Beijing Red Cross Society, told China Daily that since 2008, its local government has been paying the society for training courses in emergency response and first aid.

"We have held sessions at residential communities and distributed reading material, paid for by the local government," he said.

"This is a long-term task, and our plan is to make sure at least one person in every family knows emergency response and first aid," he added.

So far, more than 700,000 out of Beijing's 20 million residents hold a primary Red Cross first aid certificate.

Some private firms are also involved in providing training in some cities, Wang Ping noted, suggesting he would like to see more of a government role played in supervising further training across the country.

In Chongqing municipality and in the provinces of Hebei, Guizhou and Yunnan, some departments such as transportation management have paid for training for their staff, and they also encourage some members of the public to take first aid training before getting a driver's license.

shanjuan@chinadaily.com.cn