Jamie Carragher has helped raise awareness for heart disease after lending his support to an ECG testing pilot event at a local school in Bootle.
Taking place on ‘National Wear Red Day’, the Liverpool legend made an appearance at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Primary School to help promote the event put on by his 23 Foundation, The Oliver King Foundation and Pall Mall Medical as they look to offer ECG testing to children in schools.
An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a simple test that can be used to check your heart's rhythm and electrical activity, with 28 10-year-old students signing up to be tested at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Primary School.
As part of the pilot testing event, the pupils all took part in sports lessons throughout the day to help raise awareness of heart health and fitness, as well as the importance of defibrillators, with the children taken out of the lessons one by one to undergo their own ECG test.
And Carragher joined in with the children in one of their lessons before answering their questions and posing for pictures.
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“It’s been a brilliant turn out. We can’t test the whole school but we’ve tested 28 out of 30 kids in a class,” the Liverpool legend told the ECHO. “It’s a pilot scheme which hopefully can be a success and looks like it has been.
“It’s been fantastic, the kids have bought into it and it raises awareness in younger people as well and educates them.
“It’s not just ourselves that need educating on defibrillators. I think possibly the government as well.
“We need to realise how important these are up and down in schools and sports centres everywhere, and it’s really good we’re getting the kids involved as well to help educate them, to understand how important they are and to also how to work a defibrillator if something ever happened.
“Hopefully they can put these out throughout the city, it’s really important and really good to test young kids.”
The ECG testing was put on by Pall Mall Medical with their nurse conducting the test on the children and recording the results, with their private cardiologist then reviewing the results before informing the parents of the result and advising further if required.
“We’ve been liaising with the Oliver King Foundation for the past few months because we saw the good work they were doing around cardiology and raising awareness of heart health and heart issues,” Sophie Simons, Head of Marketing for Pall Mall, explained.
“We want to help raise awareness of the foundation and the work they’re doing, getting defibrillators in schools, but also ECG testing and the importance of understanding heart health.
“It’s not just something that affects older people. Genetically it can affect younger people so we’re working with both the Oliver King Foundation and the 23 Foundation to help get the kids active by playing sports and to understand how important it is to eat well and keep healthy.
“And at this pilot testing event is pulling the kids out one by one from their sessions and giving them an ECG test. There are 30 kids in the class and 28 of them signed up. The fact that so many parents have consented for their kids to have this just shows they understand it is an important issue.
“The nurse from Pall Mall Medical is here and Dr Sultan, who is our consultant cardiologist, will be reviewing the ECG results and the parents will find out the result of the ECG tests in about a week’s time.
“If you have a heart condition from birth, you’re monitored, but if you haven’t and there’s no history or an unknown history of heart issues, it will never get picked up. There’s no annual testing for kids, it’s not something that will get picked up in schools so we are just raising awareness.
“We do these tests at our clinics in Manchester, Liverpool and Newton Le Willows and we do a lot of health screens that cover an ECG test.
“We’re really proud to be working with the Oliver King Foundation and hopefully help raise awareness of the work they’re doing, getting more defibs out around Liverpool, Manchester and the North West and especially working with kids on the school initiative.”
Mark King set up the Oliver King Foundation in February 2012 after his son, Oliver, died from Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS) in 2011, at the age of just 12, moments after winning a swimming race at King David High School in Childwall.
SADS is the term used to describe heart conditions that can cause sudden death – usually among young people aged between 12 and 35.
For the best part of a decade, Mark, has been campaigning to have defibrillators set up in every school throughout the country, while he teamed up with Carragher and his Foundation a few years ago.
And he spoke passionately at the ECG testing pilot event as he strives to ensure other families avoid suffering similar tragedy to the one that took his son.
“If you go into cardiac arrest, no amount of CPR will restart your heart. You need a defibrillator,” he told the ECHO. “If there’s a fire in a building, they say get out. This is a different shout. This is get in.
“If you have a cardiac arrest in the workplace, when playing sport or even in a school, the person standing next to you will play a major part in saving your life. They will be the first chain of survival to save your life if there is a defib there.
“Since launching, the Oliver King Foundation has put 6,000 defibs out and I’ve delivered every one of them personally. We’ve trained 135,000 people to use them but the biggest statistic is we’ve saved 60 lives with the youngest being four and the oldest being 60.
“It’s a genetic condition. I’ve got the gene, I didn’t know I had the gene until we lost our Ollie and I got tested. My other son has it too. Unknowingly we have this genetic condition.
“We’ve teamed up with the 23 Foundation. Jamie Carragher has been to London with us, met ministers and been absolutely fantastic.”
He continued: “This is our first screening event. Every kid who has an ECG test will find out if they’re okay or if they need further examination. If they need further examination, they go straight into Alder Hey.
“If we come away finding one child with an irregular heartbeat, it’s another life saved. That’s what it’s all about.
“We’ve got secondary legislation at the minute. We lose 300-400 children per year in schools through cardiac arrest. Our main aim is to start with schools to get legislation, then it will roll out across the country, hopefully, for everywhere else to have a defib.
“What we’re asking for is not rocket science. We’re 20 years behind in this field. We’re very, very good in this country at treating illness but we’re rubbish at preventative. This is preventative.
“I can’t sit around knowing that another family is going to go through what we went through.”
With The 23 Foundation putting on sports sessions for the children throughout the day, Ambassador Les Wright was delighted by the success of the pilot event.
“We work with different organisations and bring them together to maximise benefit to the wider community,” he said.
“With The Oliver King Foundation providing ECG checks through their partners and The 23 Foundation providing sports and fitness training to a local school on the same day, it works on every level.
“Not only that, but the kids loved meeting Jamie and getting the opportunity to ask questions and get pictures with him. It was a great day all round.”
Jamie Carragher was speaking to the Liverpool ECHO at an ECG testing pilot event in association with The 23 Foundation , The Oliver King Foundation and Pall Mall Medical
