New Defibrillator Creates Safer Environment For All
- A new defibrillator has been installed next to the New Parks Cruyff Court thanks to The Joe Humphries Memorial Trust
- Leicester City’s in the Community will work with The Trust to ensure participants know how to use the life-saving item
- Sudden arrhythmic death syndrome week takes place from Monday 4 October, with JHMT raising awareness of the need for CPR training
- Leicester City’s charitable arm has worked with JHMT for over three years to ensure more people are aware of how to conduct CPR
The Cruyff Court multi–use games area in New Parks has launched its new public-access defibrillator after the court opened to the public earlier this month. It which will see Leicester City in the Community deliver 15 hours of provision to the local community each week.
Leicester City in the Community will work closely with local heart charity, The Joe Humphries Memorial Trust (JHMT), to create a heart-safe environment for users of the sports pitch and local community.
The JHMT has helped the project with guidance on how to set up the AED and funding for an external box, as well as providing free training in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and how to use the defibrillator.
Matt Bray, Leicester City in the Community Health and Wellbeing Manager said: “We continue to work closely with JHMT to help spread these lifesaving messages to young people, volunteers, and community groups involved within our programmes and across Leicestershire.
“Having installed a defib next to one of our regularly used community spaces, supporting local people to be confident to use it is vital and demonstrates our commitment to reducing the devastating impact of sudden cardiac arrest in the community, which can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime including healthy young people.
“Professional football clubs like Leicester City have a massive role to play to make the public aware of SADS and how its impact can be reduced by learning CPR skills and the installation of defibrillators in all community and sports clubs.”
The JHMT is a local heart charity set up in memory of Leicester teenager Joe Humphries, who collapsed and died of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), while out jogging near his family home in Rothley, Leicestershire.
JHMT started working with Leicester City in the Community – Leicester City’s charitable arm – over three years ago and has since delivered several workshops to young people across the region that LCitC operate in.
Steve Humphries, chair of the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust, said: “It’s vitally important that being heart safe is key when new community sports facilities like these are opened. Over a number of years, JHMT have been working with national governing agencies to bring about this important change that all sports facilities in the UK should include the provision of an AED.
“Sudden heart deaths aren’t inevitable, they’re preventable. Each year in England, paramedics attempt resuscitation in around half of the 60,000 people who have suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and sadly, only around eight per cent – or about 2,500 of these people – will leave hospital alive.
“Someone administering effective CPR and having quick access to a defibrillator within a few minutes can make a huge positive difference to survival rates, and that’s what we want to achieve. After all, everyone can save a life.”
SADS Awareness Week runs between 4-10 October and is an annual campaign where the JHMT undertakes awareness-raising work, including training for community sports clubs and groups across the city and county to highlight that 12 young people aged under 35 in Britain die each week from SADS.
Find out more on The Joe Humphries Memorial Trust and get CPR/defibrillator training by clicking HERE.