Funding boost for life-saving defibrillators

DEFIBRILLATORS in more and more public places in Thame, is the aim of the Staying Alive action group, and after a successful presentation to Thame Town Council this evening, a grant from the council will allow them to install a third defibrillator somewhere in the town that could save a life.

Image courtesy of AED.com

Speaking at this evening’s Policy and Resources committee meeting, Dick Tracey, South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) divisional responder manager, told councillors that cardiac arrest is the UK’s biggest killer, and that for every minute that passes before a heart can be started again, the chances of a successful resuscitation diminishes by 10 per cent on average. He explained that from a survival rate of just 4 – 5% currently, it is possible to increase that to up to 62% as has happened in Seattle, by the use of these publically available defibrillators.

The defibrillators like the one recently installed outside Brothers Hair Salon in Buttermarket, Thame, (see LINK) are specially designed to be used by members of the public with no First-aid knowledge whatsoever, ‘talking through’ the procedure step by step. Whenever someone rings 999 and asks for an ambulance, once the operator has identified that a possible cardiac arrest has occured, he or she will immediately direct the caller to a defibrillator if there is one close by, and help them operate the equipment if necessary by entering an activation code.

There is another defibrillator outside the Scout HQ in Southern Road, Thame, and one each at Upper and Lower Lord Williams’s School, and the young people are being trained so that if the need ever arose, they would not be afraid to use t