Not a shock horror story
We look forward to the day where we can say ‘‘cardiac arrest? There’s an app for that’’. Something that would juice up a smartphone to make it capable of delivering defibrillating jolts should the need arise.
Until that day comes – and, okay, scientific advancement in this field might advance in other directions – we can at least, right now, get an app to show where the nearest fully functioning, not-thathard-to-use AED defibrillator is. Splendid.
And better still is what the app shows. Southland is a province liberally peppered with them through the good offices of St John and all those who have been willing to partner with them.
The vaults of The Southland Times show a host of stories about projects and partnerships, notably the championing of the cause by the ILT Foundation, which rather primed the community pump with an initial project to have 50 placed around our boutique-sized city. By 2010, with these installed, more than 500 people trained in their use, there was a case to be put that this was the best city in the country to keel over with a heart attack.
Progress has continued apace. Not only in the city, by any means, as we’ve seen the likes of the Mataura Licensing Trust, Community Trust of Southland and PowerNet (it does seem apt that an electricity distribution company be in the mix) each making substantial contributions throughout the areas they collectively serve.
Even then, it hasn’t only been the big players who have been spreading the lifesaving capability of the community. A raft of much more modestly provisioned fundraisers have stepped up. Where did the Woodlands Tavern get its one? Look no further than the fundraising efforts of Pauline Dermody from the Woodlands Tavern.
Or Te Anau’s Doug Fox, his own life saved by a rigorous zapping at Queenstown airport. Actually two because once revived he – rather ungratefully, we feel – promptly had a second cardiac arrest. Again restored, he later paid it forward by making darned sure Mararoa School had one to hand.
And the process goes on, as it must, with increasing numbers of problematic nooks and crannies receiving theirs. With these has come survival stories to gladden the heart, the most recent of which was Janine Pine who this week met St John paramedics to thank them for their work, and the bystanders who seized – and were able to use – a defibrillator at Bill Richardson Transport World, where she had went into cardiac arrest in March.
That device had been sponsored through the PowerNet programme and, again, we mustn’t fixate only on the gizmos. By this time last year that one programme had involved the training of 575 Southlanders.
There’s another reason why the free AED defibrillator app is worth having.
It also shows where the devices aren’t. And if there are parts of our community where people might look at their own neck of the woods and frown, well, it’s perhaps a case where the locals might want to show an intelligent interest in teeing something up.
Nobody is saying defibrillators guarantee a happy outcome.
But when it comes to giving people a fighting chance, they are the very thing.