Lifesaving equipment funded by the 2017 Rescue Day has today been presented to Humberside Fire and Rescue, Gallows Wood Recovery, VolkerRail and St John Ambulance.
The annual Rescue Day was held last July at 7 Lakes Country Park in Crowle to showcase joint working between emergency and rescue services.
Rescue Day 2017has paid for eight Automated External Defibrillators (AED’s) for the North Lincolnshire community and a Lucas Device for our Clinical Operations Manager’s Fast Response Vehicle which operates within the North Lincolnshire Area.
The Lucas is a mechanical CPR device that regulates and provides perfect chest compressions at the correct rhythm and depth. The machine attaches to the patient and allows our staff on scene to provide advanced clinical life support whilst maintaining chest compressions. The machine can also be used whilst moving, extracting and transporting a patient to hospital.
Today, Chris Long, Chair of Rescue Day and Duty Operations Manager at EMAS, presented each organisation with their equipment and demonstrated how the Lucas device works.
Chris Long, Rescue Day Event Director and Duty Operations Manager for Lincolnshire said: “Rescue Day is a non-profit making event where all contributions from the public are put back into the local community.
“This year it has been fantastic to be able to provide a Lucas device to EMAS and the people of North Lincolnshire as well as increasing our community public access defibrillators within the area.
“When someone goes into cardiac arrest and their heart stops beating their chances of survival increases with early Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), access to a defibrillator and medical intervention. Therefore, these eight new AED’s and the Lucas device will save lives in the communities.
“The Lucas device has been in operation for five months in North Lincolnshire and has already been used on 15 patients in cardiac arrest.”
There are two Lucas devices in Scunthorpe and two in Grimsby.
Humberside Fire and Rescue Service have received two AED’s to place on their fire stations for 24/7 public access, St John Ambulance have recieved four AED’s for their local vehicles, which provide medical support at local events and one AED is being donated to Gallows Wood, a recovery company in Scunthorpe who support Rescue Day yearly. Volkerail are donating their AED to a Blue Bell Wood, a children’s hospice in Sheffield.
The two AED’s which have been donated to Humberside Fire and Rescue now means that every fire station in North Lincolnshire has a Community Access Defibrillator on the outside of their buildings.
When a 999 call is made, if the patient is unconscious and not breathing but within a 500m radius of a registered defibrillator, the caller will be directed to the defibrillator cabinet and given a code to access the machine.
The AED machine provides voice prompts and instructions to the user and can be operated by anybody, even with no training.
For more information about Rescue Day 2018 please visit the Rescue Day 999 website