What are First Responders?

When somebody's heart stops beating their life is in imminent danger, that much is obvious. But did you know that without CPR their chances of survival reduce by 20% every minute?.

Even with CPR (if the victim is lucky enough to be seen collapse and someone knows how to do CPR is to hand) studies show their chances of survival reduce by 10% a minute without a device called a defibrillator being used to re-start the heart. In fact the "target" time to get a defibrillator onto a person who is in cardiac arrest is 8 minutes.

As you can imagine, as things must be done so quickly, sadly in the UK many people who arrest out of hospital do not survive. Current statistics show that only 5% of people who arrest outside of hospital in the UK survive to see the first anniversary of their arrest.

The problem is especially acute in rural areas, even the best ambulance service in the world cannot guarantee to get an ambulance to everyone in its area within the necessary timescales that is where Community First responders come in.