Westfield helps to bring safety to the Sheffield community
Westfield Health has joined one of the UK’s first life-saving network partnerships to make Sheffield a safer place to live, work and visit.
The Sheffield AED Network, coordinated by Yorkshire Ambulance Service, is one of the first initiatives outside London to provide a network of sites across the city centre that house an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).
Westfield Health Chairman Graham Moore attended the project launch and spoke about the defibrillator donations the organisation has already funded across the region.
AEDs are used to deliver a controlled electric shock to restart someone’s heart if it stops and to provide early intervention to patients suffering a cardiac arrest, which is one of the keys to survival.
Emma Scott, Community Defibrillation Officer at Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: "The AED project is vitally important to the people of Sheffield and visitors to the city. We have achieved a network of 18 sites that have defibrillators, three of which were donated by Westfield, and have trained more than 400 people on the equipment.
"Yorkshire Ambulance Service has had a great relationship with Westfield Health for around seven years. Westfield has donated more than 50 defibrillators to businesses and organisations throughout South Yorkshire during this time."
The 18 sites currently involved in the network include The Crucible Theatre, Midland Train Station, Westfield House, Ponds Forge International Sports Centre and the Winter Garden. Each site has kindly offered the City Centre Ambassadors and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) access to their equipment.
Kay Stocks is a City Centre Ambassador and is trained on the AEDs. She said: “The Sheffield AED Network is set to make a vast difference in the city centre, enabling people such as the ambassadors and other organisations to have access to life saving equipment.
"I am very proud to be part of this life-saving project; it makes me proud to be a City Centre Ambassador, as well as a member of the Sheffield community."
More than 260,000 people suffer a heart attack in the UK each year, about a third of which die before reaching hospital due to cardiac arrest.
The defibrillators work by delivering a controlled electric shock through the chest wall to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat after a cardiac arrest. The faster this treatment is delivered, the better the outcome for the patient.
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