Defibrillators

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Aberdare]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to widen the availability of defibrillators in both public and private settings, including schools.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

The Government encourage organisations across England to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of their first-aid equipment. Many community defibrillators have been provided in public locations, including in shopping centres, through National Lottery funding, community fundraising schemes, workplace funding or by charities. There are now more than 43,000 registered AEDs in England, and from May 2020 the Government have required all contractors refurbishing schools or building new ones through centrally delivered programmes to provide at least one automated external defibrillator, or AED.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, each year, some 60,000 people in the UK suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. Fewer than one in 10 survive and every minute of delay in receiving defibrillation reduces their survival chances by 10%. I recently attended a drop-in event to introduce the world’s first personal defibrillator, which is around 1/10th of the size, weight and price of current models and actually fits in my jacket pocket. Have the Government considered how development such as this might affect their approach to widening access to defibrillators? Will the Minister agree to meet me and leading resuscitation organisations to discuss ways of increasing access to and awareness of defibrillators in schools, workplaces, sports locations and even homes?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble for raising the issue of this particular defibrillator. I am personally not aware of it, but I would be very happy if the noble Lord would send me more information on it—it sounds just up my street when it comes to innovation, as it were. We are working across the UK, with different sectors. In some ways, it is almost like a channel marketing campaign. How do we get defibrillators out to as many locations as possible? There is the Circuit and the National Defibrillator Database, and there will be an app that will allow people to find their nearest defibrillator. We are working with schools, educational institutions, sports grounds, transport, the Health and Safety Executive, the British Heart Foundation, Resuscitation Council UK and other partners.