Defibrillators for the Alcester Park area

Together we CAN make Alcester safer!

On Saturday 27 April 2024, I was part of a 6-person group, who helped a young man back to life at the Greig Leisure Centre. He survived thanks to the CPR he was given plus the defibrillator (AED) in place at the leisure centre.

After arriving home at Alcester Park in the afternoon, I started thinking about where the closest defibrillator was, if God forbid, one in my household - or one of my neighbours needed one - and a quick tour on www.defibfinder.uk made it clear that while Alcester might have some defibrillators. We, at Alcester Park, were too far from one available 24/7.

The British Heart Foundation recommends a defibrillator should be no further from you than 2 minutes each way, this is equivalent to a 2x 200-meter brisk walk. Their website informs that less than 10% survive an out-of-hospital cardiac, and defibrillators are currently used in less than 5% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.

After some further research involving contacting Bloor Homes (the builder), Trinity Estates (the future managing company) and Alcester Town Council. I quickly realised that something needed to change. While Bloor Homes often donate a defibrillator once they finish a housing estate, there isn’t any promise nor is there any public known time frame. Once the estate is complete, it’ll count 350 homes. Surrounding the estate there are all the homes on Roebuck Park, Jephcott Close, Allwoods Close, Eclipse Road, Icknield Row and Birmingham Road. To cover this area it wouldn’t be too much with 3 defibrillators, so to begin with this was my final target, reaching for one defibrillator at the time.

The role of a defibrillator is to buy time until the emergency services arrive. Chances of survival decrease by up to 10% every minute that passes without CPR and defibrillation. In the UK there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year. Cardiac arrests are not something only old people suffer from. The lad, I took part in helping, was physically fit and 24 years old, it can happen to us all - young and old. It can be a resident or a visitor in our home - parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren or friends.

The Bloor Homes's site office has a defibrillator but just like many others, it isn’t accessible out of working hours, when most of us are at home in the evening and during the weekends and bank holidays, where we are also more likely to have visitors.

Alcester Town Council has been very supportive and if we can fundraise for the defibrillators plus their cabinets (which protects the defibrillator from the weather and maintains a constant temperature to ensure the defibrillator battery is maintained in optimum working order), they will help us find the perfect location and make sure we get the permission to install it.

The cost of a defibrillator and cabinet is approximately £1,500 – and as the fundraising now has passed enough funds for the first, the target has been raised to £3,000. Once we reach £3,000, we will raise it again (*).

Defibrillators need a new battery on average every 2-5 years plus new pads after every use. This will also be funded by the fundraising, which is why it will continue to run. If we manage to surpass the initial final target of £4,500 plus the maintenance costs, we will start to support the wider Alcester community getting defibrillators plus their maintenance.

I hope the community of Alcester will pull together and help make all of Alcester a safe place to live. Our chance of survival shouldn’t be dependent on where in Alcester we live.

Together we WILL make Alcester safer!

(*) Please be aware donations via GoFundMe will be deducted a transaction fee of 2.9% + 25p from each donation for personal fundraisers. This is why £50 has been added per defibrillator target.

A huge thank you to all of you, who have supported the fundraising already, and especially those of you, who have taken part in the fundraising work:

This is a true testament to Alcester at its best.