The Cardiac Action Group gathered its public access defibrillators site guardians at Les Cotils for the first time to celebrate their efforts to maintain the vital equipment that saves lives when a cardiac arrest happens in the Guernsey community.
In all 265 volunteer guardians keep the 150 public access defibrillators (PADs) around the island in good working order.
The charity also funds a Community Resuscitation Development Officer (CRDO), Mike Froome, to provide free training in the community so that bystanders can perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use the defibrillators when needed. More than 9000 members of the Guernsey community have received training from the charity.
Four survivors of cardiac arrest attended the event where John Greenfield told his personal story of survival, with the help of trained bystanders and the PAD at Footes Lane, and thanked the guardians for their work.
Fellow survivors Nick Brown, Tim Le Cras and Rick Denton and charity founder Gerry Le Roy spoke to update the volunteers on the charity’s work.
Rick Denton said: ‘It was great to see around 60 of our guardians gathered together and to be able to thank them for the vital work they do. We also took the opportunity to give them further training on the maintenance of the PAD sites and on the use of our new PAD site SmartApp.
“Several of our key CAG sponsors were there so we were able to thank them for their generous support.”
