Gemma DAmbrosie
Defibrillator for Beaconside
Fundraising for Red Sky Foundation (UK)
Story
Neighbours of Beaconside are raising money to install a defibrillator on our estate through the Red Sky foundation charity.
All donations will be hugely appreciated and will be used towards installation and maintenance of the equipment.
Please see below as to why we feel this is so very much needed.
What is a defibrillator?
A defibrillator is a device that can be used to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm during cardiac arrest. Those available to the public work automatically and provide instructions and will not deliver a shock unless one is necessary.
Why is a defibrillator important?
30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen each year in the UK, and 9 out of 10 are fatal. Investing in a defibrillator from the Red Sky Foundation could be the difference between life and death and will help us keep hearts beating for longer
Community Public Access Defibrillators (cPADs)
A cPAD is a defibrillator that is available to members of the public, 24 hours a day, to use in the case of a life threatening emergency. In the north east, we know that only 8.7% of patients who had resuscitation attempted on them survived to be discharged from hospital. A victim’s chance of survival falls by around 7 to 10 percent with every minute that defibrillation is delayed. When a heart stops beating, oxygen is not being transported to the brain and other vital organs, and within four to five minutes, brain damage will start to occur without intervention.
Many organisations have defibrillators, which are machines that can be used to attempt to correct someone’s heart rhythm if they are in cardiac arrest, which is vital in the first few minutes to increase the chance of survival.
However, many of these are not available to the public to use or not available 24 hours per day which can mean that a vital life-saving piece of equipment is unavailable for over fifty per cent of the time. With cPAD sites, the machine is available to members of the public 24 hours a day, either because it is in a building that is permanently open, such as a hotel, or it has been placed in a special cabinet on the outside of a building. These machines have been registered with the ambulance service, so that in a life threatening emergency, the caller can be told where the nearest defibrillator is and asked if someone can retrieve it. If the cabinet is locked, then the caller would be given the access code.
We would be very grateful if you could consider donating toward this life saving piece of equipment to help keep our community as safe as possible.
Thank you