Over the weekend most of us saw or heard about the dramatic events that took place in the Euro 2020 football match between Denmark and Finland, during which the Denmark player Christian Eriksen collapsed on the field of play. Thankfully Eriksen appears to be well on the road to recovery, and this is in the main due to the rapid response of his teammates and the Danish team's medical staff who rushed onto the pitch to apply CPR and then use a defibrillator to 'reset' the players heart.
This event got me thinking about a campaign we ran a few years ago to ensure that as far as is practicable all of the communities in our ward had access to a defibrillator. Although we were largely successful in meeting this target I thought now might be a good time to review the provision of community defibrillators, with the specific intention of installing additional appliances as close as possible to any sporting venues on our patch. If anything, the events of last weekend in Copenhagen proved the importance of access to a defibrillator and the rapid actions of trained responders - so although occurrences like that are thankfully rare I think it's vital that we do everything we possibly can in advance to save lives under those conditions in future.
Previous posts on this subject will set out the background to our community defibrillator project (please see posts dated Monday 9 May 2014, Monday 4 January 2016 and Wednesday 12 April 2017 for details of just a few of our successful schemes). We are aware that despite the efforts of the parish clerk we have so far not been able to install a defibrillator in a suitable location at Blackhall Rocks. However, that will be the starting point for this review and we then intend to identify any gaps in provision across our communities - including crucially at sporting venues such as at Blackhall Welfare Park and others.
We will update on progress in due course, but in the meantime please get in touch with us if you know of any venues that you think might be suitable for use as a defibrillator site:
Rob: rob.crute@durham.gov.uk or Stacey: stacey.deinali@durham.gov.uk