Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing this debate, after 110,000 people made their voices heard through the e-petition system. This is a genuinely important debate about action that we can take to help save lives. I join hon. Members in recognising the work of Mark King in setting up the Oliver King Foundation, Councillor Jake Morrison, and the King family and other supporters. They have indeed been the driving force behind bringing such prominence to the devastating impact of sudden cardiac death. My hon. Friend described the tragic circumstances surrounding Oliver’s death and the drive of Oliver’s family to prevent such a tragedy happening unnecessarily to anybody else. The family should be sincerely commended and thanked for their work.

In the Government’s response to the e-petition, they said:

“Sudden cardiac death is a very complex issue. It can be caused by a range of different conditions.”

I think that everybody affected by SADS understands that it is indeed a complex issue; there are no easy answers, quick solutions or magic cures for all cases. At the same time, however, there is recognition that more can and should be done, because lives can be saved. There are two facts that we cannot ignore: first, that 80% of sudden cardiac arrests occur outside hospital; and, secondly, that survival rates have not improved since the 1960s.

In my opinion, there is a consistent theme that runs through the e-petition and the related petitions, through the work of the Oliver King Foundation, SADS UK, Cardiac Risk in the Young, the British Heart Foundation, and through the work of people such as the Marshall family and Sue Murrin-Bailey in my constituency of West Lancashire. The theme is that the Department of Health should do more to enable communities to be better informed about this condition, better trained to respond when an incident happens and better equipped to save lives.

I will take just a few moments to highlight some of the excellent work taking place in West Lancashire that is helping to save lives and to reduce the number of deaths caused by sudden cardiac arrest. John Marshall was an incredibly talented young footballer from Ormskirk; he had represented England on 12 occasions and had been signed by Everton football club. Devastatingly, John died the day before his Everton career was due to start. John’s family—his mother Maureen, dad John, and sister Hayley—have spent most of the last 18 years raising awareness and raising funds, so that other families do not have to suffer the terrible loss that they did.

Thanks to the fundraising efforts of the Marshall family, working with CRY, free heart screenings were made available to young people at Edge Hill university—in fact, the latest screening event took place just 10 days ago. Alison Cox of CRY has said that since John Marshall died in 1995, more than 10,000 young people under the age of 35 have died suddenly from undiagnosed heart conditions, yet around 9,000 of those young people could still be alive if they had been tested for heart conditions.

I now move on to the work of Sue Murrin-Bailey, the former West Lancashire borough council mayoress. Providing defibrillators was one of her chosen charities during her year as mayoress; she worked tirelessly to raise funds and that work has continued since her term as mayoress ended. At a school where Sue is a governor, a parent collapsed with cardiac arrest: luckily an ambulance was nearby, so that parent was saved, but the case highlighted the need for much-needed life-saving equipment to be nearby.

Sue has raised £35,000, which has enabled the purchase of 21 automated external defibrillators, but having raised the money and purchased the equipment, Sue and the North West ambulance service have encountered other barriers. Astonishingly, there appear to be planning restrictions that are delaying the installation of the equipment in some public places. The Minister looks surprised; I was absolutely astonished to learn that. The problem is about locating yellow boxes in conservation areas. Perhaps we should put a higher price on the conservation of human life. I urge the Minister to speak to her colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to ask them to remove those senseless barriers. I am happy to provide the Minister with even more detail about the issue after the debate, if she wants it.

Sue Murrin-Bailey has been working with the North West ambulance service to identify the best locations for the equipment, through hot spot mapping to identify where the highest incidences of cardiac arrest are found and where the equipment is most needed. Once a defibrillator is installed, the NWAS catalogues the location on its database, which enables the location of the defibrillator to be provided to anyone when a 999 call is made. That information is vital when we consider that the use of an AED within four to eight minutes of sudden cardiac arrest increases the survival rate by 75%. All of these things are essential in the chain of survival, and as I said earlier, 80% of these cases occur away from hospital.

Many people experiencing sudden cardiac arrest are reliant on the people around them knowing what to do, and those first few minutes are key. People need to know that, first, they must call 999; secondly, they must administer CPR while a defibrillator is located and used—it is important that it is actually used—before, thirdly, they pass the patient on to receive advanced care.

A better informed public will not come about through telepathy or osmosis. The public need help and the Department of Health is surely the best equipped agency to lead nationally. As the Minister will understand, up and down the country, organisations, bereaved families and local communities have not been waiting for the Department of Health to take the lead on SADS. People have been out there doing something—raising money and providing equipment—but they recognise that more action needs to be taken now, so that more deaths can be prevented. What people want is the Department of Health to work with them in making a difference, in saving lives and in reducing the number of deaths caused by sudden cardiac arrest. Surely that is not too much to ask?