Mark Wright became visibly emotional while discussing the importance of learning CPR on This Morning.
The radio presenter and former The Only Way is Essex star appeared on Thursday’s (19 January) edition of the lifestyle programme.
Speaking to hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, Wright recounted an experience in which he performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a stranger while at a hotel.
Having been part of an educational campaign to teach people how to assist someone experiencing cardiac arrest just a week before, Wright launched into action when a woman cried out for assistance for her husband.
Though the presenter pumped the man’s chest with his hands for minutes, the man was not able to regain full consciousness when the ambulance arrived and later died.
While speaking about his attempt, Wright choked up and had to take a break from talking, and was comforted by the hosts.
Schofield then offered his own story of saving his father with CPR when he was in his early twenties.
“It’s knackering, to do that for half an hour,” he reasoned. “You can only do your best, thank goodness you were there.”
Wright continued his story by explaining that the man’s family had the opportunity to say goodbye for longer due to his hand pumps sustaining his life.
“He wasn’t necessarily alive when I was giving CPR, but he was coming back with some breaths,” Wright explained.
“It allowed him to then get the ambulance to put him on a life-support machine. He wasn’t pronounced dead while he was under my hands, but I did all I could, and that’s all you can do in that situation.”
Wright is now working with a campaign to enact “Justin’s Law”.
Named after former Tottenham Hotspur defender Justin Edinburgh, who died of a cardiac arrest in 2019, the movement aims to make it mandatory for all health and support facilities in the UK to be equipped with a defibrillator.
You can find information on how to perform CPR if someone is unresponsive and not breathing here.
