A grant of £1,900 from the Wigley Community Fund paid for Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) that was installed in a redundant phone box in the village of Stockton, Warwickshire.
A defibrillator is a device that gives a high energy electric shock to the heart of someone who is in cardiac arrest. Figures from the Community Heartbeat Trust suggest that 30,000 people will suffer sudden cardiac arrest and approximately 95% of those will die before reaching hospital.
With an AED in the community, the survival rate could be as high as 50 per cent. The nearest hospitals to Stockton are 9.5 miles and 14 miles away, which demonstrates how vital a defibrillator is to a rural village.
Villager Sue Coutts, with the support of Stockton Parish Council and Councillor, John Emberton, had been seeking funding to get a defibrillator installed there since the death of her father who suffered a cardiac arrest.
Sue said, ‘I’m not sure whether a defibrillator would have saved my father’s life, but it did highlight how important this potentially lifesaving piece of equipment can be. It’s thanks to the generosity of Wigley that we can now buy one for Stockton.’
The installation and maintenance of the defibrillator and the phone box was funded by Stockton Parish Council, which also paid for a group of villagers to be trained to use it.