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An NHS project training at-risk teenagers how to give emergency first aid to stabbing victims is launching in London schools.

Doctors and nurses will show pupils how to stem bleeding, keep victims alive in the first crucial minutes after an attack, and keep themselves safe.

The “zero responder” workshops were first run at Feltham and Pentonville young offender institutions by A&E specialists from the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel last autumn.

Since then, the two-hour sessions have also been held at youth and community centres in Hackney and Southwark.

This term the Barts Health Trust specialists will launch the workshops in London schools for the first time.

They will run them in four east London pupil referral units — education centres for children who have been removed from mainstream school — this autumn, with the aim of expanding into mainstream schools.

Experts will use simulation and practical exercises to teach groups of about 15 to 20 pupils, who will be able to ask questions.

Michael Carver, lead violence reduction nurse at the Royal London - a role funded by Barts Charity - said he wanted to give first aid to all pupils, adding: “The primary outcome is they will be able to do first-responder things to stop people bleeding to death in the first five minutes; and the secondary outcome is we start talking properly about knife crime.”

The move is part of a Barts Health violence reduction initiative, running alongside a NHS programme to tackle youth violence in the capital, led by its first clinical director for violence reduction, Royal London trauma surgeon Martin Griffiths.