Life-saving equipment to be made available at bus stations.
Centro staff now have the skills and life-saving kit to ‘shock’ passengers back to life thanks to West Midlands Ambulance Service and the British Heart Foundation.
Midlands Centro recently purchased ten automated external defibrillators (AEDs) from the British Heart Foundation. West Midlands Ambulance has donated a further life-saving device to complete the project which will see a defibrillator based at all ten bus stations as well as Centro’s head office in Birmingham City Centre.
The introduction follows a cardiac arrest at Wolverhampton Bus Station last year where a passenger was saved with a defibrillator from the nearby railway station.
Over the last few months, the Trust has trained bus staff in basic first aid, CPR and the use of the defibrillator to make sure they’re ready to help if someone suffers a cardiac arrest.
Centro Health and Safety Manager Dave Hadley said: “We hope of course that they will never need to be used, but it should be reassuring to both our own employees and the travelling public to know that if there is a need we have the equipment and the skills available to help. This availability is a welcome addition to the first aid service we already provide at our bus stations, an excellent example of us giving something back to the community we serve.”
Andy Jeynes, the Trust’s Community Response Manager, added: “With the number of people that pass through bus stations each day, it makes perfect sense to have defibrillators on hand in case someone suffers a cardiac arrest. The quicker we can start CPR the better the chances of survival.”