Heartwize

What would you do if someone collapses unconscious in front of you?

In July 2023 ischaemic heart disease was the leading cause of death in England. Over 30,000 people in the UK have a cardiac arrest with fewer that 10% surviving. Every week in the UK, 12 people under the age of 35 die from an undiagnosed heart condition.

Danish international Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest in Euro 2020. His life was saved by immediate treatment and he is now playing again for Manchester United.

Tom Lockyer of Luton Town collapsed on the pitch during a game in December 2023 and his life was saved by immediate CPR treatment. He is hopeful of restarting his career.

In Leicestershire, Alan Birchenall suffered a cardiac arrest in 2017 and his life was saved by CPR.

Knowing how to react in these situations is critical to saving lives

The aim of the HeartWize Rotary programme is to allay the fears of getting involved, by giving you the knowledge and basic skills to maintain life until the emergency services can get there.

HeartWize aims to spread knowledge of CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) and the use of defibrillators across communities in our district. This can be through Rotary clubs, schools, community groups, businesses, indeed any organisation.

The Heartwize-Rotary team has run demonstrations of life-saving skills, or has dates to do so, at about one third of the clubs in the district, averaging well over 20 attendees at each event taking an active part in hands-on CPR and using defibrillators. Clubs have invited participation by people from non-Rotary community groups. People taking part have universally found the events to be informative, enjoyable and potentially very useful (even though we all hope no-one will have cause to use the skills they have learned!).

Clubs now have people trained as trainers – able to lead one of the several training groups at each of the events we run, under the leadership of the Heartwize team itself. They have purchased sets of CPR mannequins to support the training (partially paid for by The Rotary Foundation). We are encouraging Rotarians from other clubs to come forward to attend “train the trainer” sessions, and in due course spread the learning of CPR to other community groups across the district. This will take place with support from Heartwize.

We are very grateful to the Heartwize team, especially Dr Skehan, Dr Toff and Julie Young, event coordinator and trainer for Heartwize. But we cannot expect them alone to carry out all the training we might like for our communities across the whole of our district.

So, we would like to hear from any club, community group, university or college that would like a speaker, presentation, and/or training. Also, from any Rotarian that would like to be involved, as part of a small team, to train local community groups in your area.

Together we can save lives