On february 3rd 2021 my 39 year old husband and father of 5 survived a heart attack and subsequent cardiac arrest whilst we were waiting for an ambulance. I performed life saving CPR under instruction of the 999 operator and then the paramedics arrived and got his heart back in rhythm. against all odds he was home and doing well a few days later and we are all so thankful. i set up the facebook page facebook.com/locallifesavers999 to organise free community CPR and defibrillatortraining sessions with the help of yorkshire ambulance service. The community donated almost £1800 which funded a community CPR training kit and a public defibrillator located at emley moor WMC. Hopefully with this knowledge and awareness we can save many lives for generations to come.

There are approximately 60,000 calls made per year to the ambulance service with suspected cardiac arrest with 80% of these occurring in the home. Resuscitation is only attempted by the ambulance crew on less than half of these victims (28,000) because unfortunately by the time crew arrive the casualty has already died as a result of not receiving bystander CPR.

With early bystander recognition, an early call for help, early CPR and early defibrillation known as “The Chain of Survival” the chances of survival dramatically increase. With CPR and Defibrillation in under 5 minutes a victim’s chance of survival increases to 50-70%.