Saving thousands of lives

Thousands of lives could be saved every year in the UK if all children were trained in basic life support, defibrillators were more readily available and screening was introduced for children at risk of heart conditions, said experts from the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS) to an audience of MPs.

The Trust held an event yesterday (27 January 2015) at the House of Commons, hosted by Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, to get parliamentary support for improving survival rates for out of hospital cardiac arrest in the UK, which are currently around 8 percent.

Guest speakers from NWAS, and those whose life had been saved or who had successfully resuscitated a victim, spoke at the event about the importance of bystanders taking action by calling 999, starting CPR and using a defibrillator to significantly improve chances of survival.

The life-savers and survivors of cardiac arrest who talked about their experiences, including a lady who successfully performed CPR on her husband while being talked through the simple steps by an NWAS call-handler, and a gentleman who was resuscitated by a lake with a public access defibrillator.

NWAS Chief Executive, Bob Williams said: "Early intervention makes the difference between life and death so it's vital that bystanders know what to do – call 999, start CPR and grab the nearest defibrillator. Teaching these potentially life-saving skills in schools so that children take them throughout their life is an obvious solution.

"Defibrillators are the only way to restart the heart in some cases of cardiac arrests, so having them as readily available as fire extinguishers would make a real difference.

"We would also welcome screening for children at risk of sudden cardiac arrests to prevent unnecessary deaths. We want the UK to have the best survival rates for out of hospital cardiac arrests and believe these steps would help get us there."

Numerous guests signed pledge boards in support of NWAS' aims, including MPs and Lords who fully supported the need to strengthen the links of the chain of survival to improve out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rates across the UK.

AudlemOnline adds: A week ago, we published the locations of the seven defibrillators in the Audlem area. Audlem St James' school, we have since learnt, also has a defibrillator, as does Woore and, shortly, Buerton.

Audlem First Responders are also laying on very effective Heartstart courses – the last one was just two weeks ago – and we will publish news of any upcoming courses, which are highly recommended.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.