A life-saving defibrillator has been installed at a Lanarkshire village train station by a local community charity.
Christine McCrosson, Principle Trustee of the Hartwood Community Development Group, is delighted it is up and running.
“We wanted one in the village as it’s a semi-rural location and ambulances can take a bit longer to arrive especially in the winter months.
“We had spoken about it as a charity quite a while back but we didn’t have any money for it,” she said. “So we thought as soon as we did have some money we would buy it.
"The second thing was where would we site it? There were plenty of places with good accessibility but obviously we needed somewhere with an electricity supply. It’s not for the defib itself, but the cabinet needs to be kept at a certain temperature. So that was a kind of stumbling block.
"One of the village residents had suggested we could put it in their gable end and it would still be accessible, but we then thought the best place for it would be the train station. So we contacted Scotrail at the beginning of the year to tell them we had purchased it. We asked if we could site it at the station and they said yes! And they did it free of charge, which was good.”
The community group went for the HeartSine 500P Bronze package with an external locked cabinet, at a cost of £1350. It is semi-automatic and has CPR advisor.
Christine, a retired nurse, continued: “We received £4000 from North Lanarkshire Council’s Recover NL Environmental Fund so we bought village signs and we’re going to buy a share box, a kind of honesty box, and we used part of the money for the defibrillator.”
“We went with the type that is already used within Scotrail stations,” Christine added. “They have already put a lot of defibs in stations over the last year or so, but ours just didn’t happen to be on the map for one as it isn’t busy enough. It’s up and running and linked up to the local ambulance service.
Details of the new life-saving device in Hartwood come as Clare Adamson, MSP for neighbouring Motherwell and Wishaw, is encouraging constituents to familiarise themselves with the locations of local defibrillators.
The SNP politician, is highlighting Defibfinder.uk, a website which displays locations of nearby defibrillators in the event of a medical emergency.
Funded and managed by the British Heart Foundation, The Defib Finder is a vital tool, and contains details of the recently installed device in Hartwood as well as others in the area including in Allanton, Shotts and Newmains.
When someone has a cardiac arrest, it is essential that they receive CPR and defibrillation as quickly as possible. Early CPR and defibrillation can double the chances of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
You can learn about CPR and more about using a defibrillator from the British Heart Foundation, St John’s Ambulance and the Resuscitation Council UK.
Guardians or owners of a defibrillator are being asked to register it on thecircuit.uk – the National Defibrillator Network which ensures that defibrillators are visible to the ambulance service.
Ms Adamson said: “Defibrillators are easily found on the website. These facilities are usually stored in locked units and can be opened by code given by a 999 dispatcher.
“The website also makes registering a defibrillator simple, making them visible for emergency service use.
“Knowing the location of a defibrillator and what to do in these time-critical situations could save a life.
“So, I am urging my Motherwell and Wishaw constituents to familiarise themselves with these procedures in the event they are in an emergency.”
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