Heartstart and Public Access Defibrillators

Working in partnership with the British Heart Foundation and South East Coast Ambulance service, Mole Valley District Council (MVDC) has delivered over 50 free training courses spread over many local communities.

As a result over one thousand residents have been trained to administer potentially life saving Emergency Life Support skills.

The sessions held so far in Mole Valley have received excellent feedback from attendees. The courses cover approaching and assessing a possible casualty, if breathing, placing casualty into the recovery position and, if not breathing, how to carry out CPR.

The course will also cover what action/s to take if someone is choking or suffering from a serious bleed, what the difference is between a Heart Attack and Sudden Cardiac Arrest and finally the importance of and how to use an Automated External Defibrillators.

We have more recently run courses at local primary schools and run a course to train the teachers of local secondary schools, to enable them to pass on this life saving training to their pupils as part of the curriculum.

If you are interested in hosting or attending a course, please contact Elizabeth.Absalom@secamb.nhs.uk

Public Access Defibrillator Locations

The statistics for heart attacks in the UK are alarming, with around 270,000 people suffering a heart attack each year, about a third of whom die before reaching hospital. Sudden cardiac arrest is a leading cause of premature death but, with immediate treatment, many lives can be saved. The swift use of a defibrillator, with its visual and verbal instructions, make it very easy to use and can make a critical difference by delivering an electric shock to re-start the heart. Early defibrillation can triple a person's chance of survival.

CPR is also a vital part of the survival chain following cardiac arrest, along with early defibrillation, as Hypoxia (Oxygen starvation) causes irreversible damage to the brain after 3-4 minutes and for each minute without CPR the survival rate reduces by 10%.

The national target for the Ambulance Service to respond to Category 1 calls; which are life threatening including when casualty is in cardiac arrest is within seven minutes. The target for Category 2 calls for emergency calls including stroke and heart attack casualties is within 18 minutes. However particularly in some of the more rural areas in Mole Valley, these targets are sometimes not achieved. With this in mind, we will continue to work with communities to get residents trained and more Public Access Defibrillators (PAD) installed throughout the district.

MVDC now has 50 PAD's installed, spread over 34 communities in Mole Valley.