A Gift for Bristol: 67 Fully Funded Defibrillators Available for Your Community
By Jill Dando News
Great Western Air Ambulance Charity (GWAAC) is asking the people of Bristol to help make the city a safer place in three easy steps.
Thanks to generous funding from Bristol City Council and more funding now available from the Sam Polledri Foundation, GWAAC is looking for locations for 67 lifesaving public access defibrillators and wants to hear from you.
Bristol City Council has awarded £93,600 for 52 funded defibrillators and following a recent fundraising event, the Sam Polledri Foundation is delighted to increase the amount it can contribute to £25,000, which will pay for another 15 defibrillators.
This means GWAAC is looking to place 67 public access defibrillators across the city and the charity needs the help of the communities it serves to find locations for them — doing something today could save a life in the future.
How to help in three easy steps
The charity has developed an innovative new mapping tool that will help identify hotspots for the placement of new defibrillators. The tool looks at areas of deprivation where there is a lack of public access defibrillators and where there are higher proportions of cardiac arrests occurring, but the charity wants the public to help find exact locations.
By helping to identify a spot in your community you’ll be joining the team effort that is needed to make Bristol a safer place for those who suffer a cardiac arrest.
Step 1: Find out where the nearest defib is to you. For some simple instructions go to: gwaac.com/bristoldefibs
Step 2: Decide where you want a defibrillator.
Step 3: Register your interest to locate a public access defibrillator at: gwaac.com/bristoldefibs
Why you need a public access defibrillator nearby
GWAAC saves lives across Bristol and beyond and its specialist crew are called to around 500 cardiac arrest patients a year – a quarter of the charity’s total missions.
Yet, despite the extraordinary skills of the crew, their speedy arrival to the scene, and the equipment they bring (equipment and skills usually found in a hospital emergency department) – they are the first to say that the precious minutes before they arrive are critical.
Bystander CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and defibrillation before an ambulance arrives can increase cardiac arrest survival rates from less than 10 percent to more than 70 percent.
To avoid needless deaths, GWAAC’s goal is that anyone who suffers a cardiac arrest will receive immediate CPR and then defibrillation within five minutes, ideally even sooner.
Tragically, Sam Polledri, a fit and healthy 24 year old, wasn’t one of the fortunate ones. On 26 February 2022 on a night out with friends, he suffered a cardiac arrest in Millennium Square. Despite being surrounded by five defibrillators, none were publicly accessible, and he didn’t survive.
Sam’s mum, Louise Polledri, says: “If a defibrillator is inside a building but that building is closed it cannot be accessed in an emergency. And if a defibrillator is not registered this means that when a call is made to 999, the call handler cannot see that there is a defibrillator in the area. Defibrillators must be accessible to the public. We’re hoping that the £25,000 funding that we have raised for this project will also be used to help people who have existing defibrillators and want a cabinet fitted externally to make them accessible 24/7 with unrestricted access for the community. We’d like to encourage these people to come forward.”
It takes a team effort to help Bristol communities live safer lives
On 13 December 2022, Louise Polledri, along with GWAAC’s Critical Care Doctor, Tim Godfrey, and Simon Brookes, a GWAAC volunteer, delivered an impassioned speech to a full council meeting. The 58 Councillors unanimously backed a motion for Bristol City Council to commit to improving access to defibrillators.
Further support came from Councillor Ellie King and from Steve Smith, who was a Councillor at the time who supported GWAAC’s applications for funding which led to the fantastic £93,600 for 52 defibrillators from Bristol City Council Community Infrastructure Levy Funds.
‘I am delighted that GWAAC have been successful in a city-wide council funding bid to secure £93,600 for more defibrillators in the city. This funding will supply 52 new defibrillators, ensuring we keep on track to provide good coverage of defibrillators across the city, along with rolling out resident training on how to use them. It was a pleasure to work with GWAAC on this important bid and to gain the support of so many city councillors from all parties in recognition of vital value they will bring to our neighbourhoods and the lives they could save.’ Ellie King, Bristol City Councillor
Dave Battrick from the Electrical Contractors' Association (ECA) and members Clarkson Evans, Source Electrical, and Electrio are already supporting the Sam Polledri Foundation with some of the defibrillator installations. Along with other members, they are very kindly assisting this project.
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