Good Samaritan law

First Aid & CPR Guyana

The Good Samaritan: compassion and protection

Drawn from the Bible (Luke 10:25-37), the parable of the Good Samaritan tells of a traveller left for dead who is rescued by a stranger that tends to him and sees to his care. Beyond its religious context, it carries a universal message: the moral duty to help others in danger, through compassion and altruism.

Inspired by this principle, many so-called Good Samaritan laws have been enacted around the world to protect those who assist in good faith during an emergency from legal action. The exact scope of that protection, however, varies from one jurisdiction to another: here is what the law applicable to your region provides.

Statute citation

Governing act No dedicated Good Samaritan statute. Guyana is a common-law jurisdiction (former British colony, despite Roman-Dutch remnants in land law); liability rests on common-law negligence principles. There is no general statutory duty to rescue.
Scope of protection No specific statutory protection for the volunteer rescuer. The intervener is judged against the common-law reasonable-person standard and is liable only for negligence. No one is required to intervene.
Duty to rescue No
AED liability protection No
No legal duty to rescue

Your protection under the law

In Guyana, a former British colony that adopted the common law despite some Roman-Dutch remnants in land law, there is no dedicated Good Samaritan statute. A rescuer's protection flows from negligence principles: someone who acts in good faith and reasonably, by the standard of the prudent person, is not answerable simply for having helped. Only genuine negligence could, in theory, be held against them.

No duty to act, but every reason to

Guyanese law obliges no one to intervene: helping remains a decision of conscience, not a legal compulsion. A person who chooses to help in good faith and with good sense is not exposed to the harshness of the courts. The real barrier, then, is not legal: it is whether or not you know how to act in an emergency.

Why training matters

In cardiac arrest, every minute without CPR costs roughly 10% of the chance of survival: the bystander becomes the first link in the chain, the one who keeps hope alive until help arrives. In Guyana, where vast interior regions and remote communities can greatly lengthen response times, that first action is sometimes the only one possible in time. Where the law builds no detailed protective framework, competence takes over and gives the confidence to act. To get trained is to choose to be useful when every second counts.