ounced plans to introduce life-saving defibrillators into every one of its supermarkets in the UK.They have also entered into a partnership with the British Heart Foundation (BHF) which will also see staff trained in CPR.
The rollout started this week in London and will be completed by the end of the year. A public access defibrillator can be used by any member of the public to deliver an electric shock to the heart when someone is having a cardiac arrest.
Asda’s Head of Community, Dawn Clements, said: “We’re really proud of our investment of over £500,000 in providing life-saving defibrillators for all of the communities we operate in. It can take a number of minutes for an ambulance to reach one of our stores in response to an emergency like a cardiac arrest. The commitment we’re making today could significantly cut the amount of time a cardiac arrest sufferer has to wait for life-saving CPR and defibrillation, giving them the best possible chance of survival.”
Asda will roll out the defibrillators in its 609 stores, warehouses and offices by the end of 2014. The BHF will work with local ambulance trusts to run familiarisation training for 12,000 Asda colleagues on how to use the defibrillator as part of the full chain of survival.
The partnership is the latest step in the BHF’s campaign to improve cardiac arrest survival rates across the UK. To date, the charity’s Heartstart CPR training programme has been delivered to 3.5 million people and the charity has helped place more than 10,000 public access defibrillators in UK communities.
BHF say that more than 60,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest outside of hospital every year in the UK. But only one in ten people survive. This is significantly lower than survival rates in other countries where rates of bystander CPR and defibrillation with a public access defibrillator are higher.
