Heartstart

There are 73,000 deaths from Coronary Heart Disease in the UK each year.  Of these, over 20,000 are avoidable. Recognition of these conditions with prompt treatment can save thousands of lives. One example here in Dumfries and Galloway was of a gentleman who had chest pains for three days before he died of a Cardiac Arrest.  His daughter, later, on a Heartstart course, said “If only we had known....”  If only.

Heartstart offers a two hour "hands on" course, affiliated to the British Heart Foundation and to Building Healthy Communities (Machars) covering:

Recognition of heart failure or heart attack.

Treatment of a person who is unconscious but breathing normally.

Treatment of a person who is unconscious and breathing abnormally or not at all.

The safe use of a defibrillator.

Choking in both adults and children and what to do with severe bleeding.

Courses are FREE(with the exception of volunteers expenses) and EVERYONE can benefit from a Heartstart course. The team currently teach the course to anyone from Primary School pupils to GP's.


There is also a schools scheme in operation where the team train teachers to deliver the course to their pupils in 36 schools across the region. At Stranraer Academy, for the first time in Scotland, senior pupils have been trained as peer tutors to deliver the course across the 1000 pupils at the school. This has now been extended to Wallace Hall Academy in Thornhill and it is hoped to roll it out to other Academies over the next few months.

So, with the schools training an estimated 3800 pupils per year and the Heartstart team up to 1000 per year, a generation of lifesavers is developing, together with the introduction of Public Access Defibrillators, such as the one on the Castle wall in Stranraer and in most Machars villages and, importantly, the knowledge of how to use them, the survival rate following a Cardiac Arrest in Dumfries and Galloway has risen from around 4% a few years ago to 19% in the last year. The national rate is 16% but the Borders Region is reporting 29%, so, although we are above the national average, there is room for improvement. Norway has a 40% survival rate because they have taught the Heartstart course to virtually every citizen.

Working with the Council/NHS Health and Wellbeing Partnership, Heartstart is providing opportunities to train more people. Any organisation or group of 8 people or more from anywhere in Dumfries and Galloway is welcome to ask for a course. For more details please contact:

David Hirst, Coordinator, Heartstart (Newton Stewart), 30 South St., Port William, 01988 700637 davidhirsthome@gmail.com