The local Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for more defibrillators to be made accessible to the public. This is because statistics show that your chances of surviving many types of heart attack increase from 0% to 40% with early CPR and early defibrillation.
In a formal question to Bury Council, Holyrood councilor Tim Pickstone discorvered that the council did not keep records of publicly accessible defibrillators in Bury.
There are no publicly accessible defibrillators registered with the ambulance service in the Prestwich area, where Tim is a councilor. Until this year Bury Council was the only council in Great Manchester which did not have defibrillators in its sport centres.
Councilor Pickstone has written to the council asking them to include the longfield in a scheme and has also written to Prestwich Tesco and Bowker Vale Sainsburys.
If you are involved in a community organisation or sports group in Prestwich that would be interested in working with use to raise money or grants for a defibrillator please get in touch.
As a Trained First Aider I’m a little worried about How Available you want Defib’s to be.
It’s all well and good having Defib’s located at strategic places around the Borough, where Trained First Aiders and Medical Professionals can access them in an Emergency, but it’s VITAL to understand that a Defib’ used (with the best intentions) but incorrectly could induce a possibly FATAL Heart Rhythm in the person you were attempting to revive.
Absolutely Robert – couldn’t agree more. Normally installing a debribulator would go hand in hand with doing some training for people (e.g. if it is was in a sports club, with some key people there). As you will know the increase in survival rate is only the case when you have proper CPR, and then proper early defib
Three defibrillators have been installed in Tottington about a year ago.