Secret Service personnel save life of Indian-American journalist

Washington, March 24: An Indian-American journalist suffered a heart attack inside the White House, but a prompt response by US Secret Service personnel saved his life.

Manku Singh, the only Sikh journalist accredited to the White House, collapsed in the East Room while covering the White House Science Fair moments before President Barack Obama was to speak.

Singh is a community reporter-cum-cameraperson for TV Asia -- the largest South Asian cable network in the US.

The alert Secret Service personnel immediately responded to him and called the ambulance.

The emergency responders who tried to revive him found that he had no pulse. They used cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is commonly known as CPR, to try to revive him while administering oxygen. After about four minutes, one of the technicians said, "We have a rhythm."

CPR is an emergency procedure performed in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person who has cardiac arrest.

The emergency medical technicians later said Singh had a strong pulse.

He was transferred to the nearby George Washington hospital.

At the hospital, soon, Singh underwent a heart catheterisation, and the early signs were reported to be encouraging.

"Secret Service literally saves a life in back of East Room," Benjamin Corb, who was in the East Room representing the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, tweeted about the incident.

The fair was attended by several Indian-American students.

PTI