Community Health Campaign

More Defibrillators for Medway

An Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is an essential tool to save someone’s life if they experience a cardiac arrest. Very often, the first sign of a heart problems is a cardiac arrest. To counter increasing ambulance response time, the AED provides an effective, community life-saving device. If a defibrillator can be deployed within 3-5 minutes of collapse, survival rates are as high as 50-70%. For every 1-minute delay, resuscitation success decreases by 7-10%. Sadly, there are fewer than 40 deliberators to cover the whole of Medway and many cannot be accessed 24/7. But AEDs are easy to use and the public can be easily trained. More 24-hour accessible AEDs in the community would save lives. We are campaigning for a Medway-wide network of defibrillators within easy access for the public in the event of a cardiac arrest. There are Medway charities, community venues and businesses who will provide a publicly accessible AED. But for these to help most in an emergency, these defibrillators need to be readily signposted and spotted easily in an emergency. We call on Medway council to support this life-saving network by providing training venues for first-aid training courses and the signposts to the defibrillators. Let’s tackle Medway defibrillator shortfall together. Sign our petition calling for 24/7 accessible defibrillators, better signage and first aid training.