Dear Sir,
Everyone should have the chance to learn Basic Life Support and gain the confidence to use it in the event of an emergency. Recent studies show that the people who didn’t receive CPR from a bystander only had a 4.3% chance of survival, but that more than doubled to 9.1% if a bystander gave CPR.
In the UK we have 30,000 outside of hospital cardiac arrests each year. If we can increase survival rate to 12% by performing early bystander CPR and early defibrillation we could save 1200 more lives. With the fantastic work and resources of the defibs on the town, together we could really make a difference.
My name is Joanne Jones, I have been a nurse for 25 years, and other than my job as a practice nurse and running the charitable organisation Community Spirit, I have often wondered how I could help more. I have now completed my instructors training in Basic Life Support and want to use this to help the people of Newton Aycliffe train to ‘Restart a Heart’.
I must say a massive thank you to Aycliffe Radio for sponsoring us and purchasing our start up equipment, it was amazing of them to do this.
We had our very first Basic Life Saving session on Sunday 23rd April, thanks to The Big Club for allowing us to use a room. The group was very enthusiastic, and everyone received a certificate of attendance.
I plan on the groups I run being inclusive for everyone and free of charge. I will advertise the sessions on Facebook and via the Newton News or, if you belong to a local group and would like to have a BLS session, please contact me via email: communityspiritaycliffe@gmail.com
We would like to acquire more equipment to make the sessions more effective, please contact the above email if you have a donation. Let’s all work together and make sure, when we need to, we are able to ‘Restart a Heart’.
