MP for Beverley & Holderness and founder of the CADEY campaign, Graham Stuart, is looking for the campaign’s lifesaving work to install more defibrillators to hit new highs in the New Year.
CADEY – which stands for Community Access Defibrillators for East Yorkshire – was founded in 2018 with the aim of covering every community in Beverley & Holderness with a publicly accessible defibrillator, and also seeks to raise awareness of the importance of defibrillators and CPR.
Initially, just over 60 communities were identified as lacking a defibrillator by Graham and the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) – a number which has now been cut by more than half thanks to the campaign’s efforts, by bringing the emergency services together with local charities and fundraisers to raise money for the lifesaving devices.
The local MP is hoping to get the number of communities without a defibrillator down even further in 2021 as Covid-19 restrictions are eased and the country begins to build back from the pandemic.
Roughly 30,000 cardiac arrests happen outside of hospitals every year, but currently only 3,000 people survive because of how important it is to get immediate, on-the-scene treatment. Every minute without treatment reduces someone’s chances of survival by approximately 10%.
No formal training is needed to perform CPR or to use defibrillators. Guidance from the Resuscitation Council UK advises that it remains important for people to provide emergency CPR after they have called 999, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, by performing chest compressions without any rescue breaths.
Graham said, “We’ve made great strides in covering my constituency with defibrillators, but the coronavirus crisis has understandably taken up a lot of our partners’ time given that they’re medical teams and charities.
“The vaccine rollout means we can start to think about restrictions easing soon, and I’m hopeful that this means we can continue installing defibs across Beverley & Holderness with renewed vigour.
“We’re also planning to send postcards to local residents with info on where their local defibrillator is, and the postcards will also invite people to download the what3words app, which gives every 3-metre square in the world a unique combination of 3 words. YAS use this so they know exactly where to go on callouts as it can save vital seconds and minutes.
“I’m really looking forward to working with our partners to drum up more funding and interest in defibrillators so that we can achieve blanket coverage in Beverley & Holderness.”
