Six East lancashire schools to get heart defibrilators (From Blackburn Citizen)

Six East lancashire schools to get heart defibrilators

3:00pm Sunday 24th February 2013 in Hyndburn

SIX schools will have defibrilators installed thanks to the Pumping Marvellous charity and the Lancashire Telegraph.

Ten defibrilators have been purchased with £10,000 of funding from the Gannett Foundation, the charitable arm of Gannett Co Inc, owner of Newsquest Media Group, whose titles include the Lancashire Telegraph.

To date, nine schools in East Lancashire have been approached and six have accepted the potentially life-saving equipment.

Defibrilators can be used by an untrained person to help jump-start the heart in the case of a cardiac arrest.

They will be located in schools, but will be available to the community in case of an emergency.

The school that will be having the equipment installed include St Mary's RC School in Oswaldtwistle, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour RC School in Blackburn, Darwen Vale High School in Darwen, Wensley Fold Primary School in Blackburn, and St Augustine High School in Billington.

Other schools which have been approached also include Rose Grove in Burnley and Witton Park High School in Blackburn.

The charity would also like to install a defibrilator into a school in Sabden, due to its remote location.

Nick Hartshorne-Evans, chairman of the Altham charity, said: “I think it’s a great uptake.

“These schools have been identified because of the number of high priority calls in the area for the ambulance service, which include cardiac arrests and heart attacks.

“All these schools have been targeted because they are in these hot spot areas.

“We have also looked at locations in hard to reach areas where response times are longer.”

Installation will take place from March onwards.”