On 27th July 2018, at the end of the very hot spell, Francis, a healthy 50 year old, was taken gravely ill very suddenly.  He collapsed on Cockshot Hill walking back home with his wife Caron (after a relaxing yoga class!) from Reigate town centre. He suffered a cardiac arrest – his heart stopped and he was clinically dead for 13 mins!  Luckily, two passers-by – an off-duty policeman Mikko Ball and a FedEx driver Alin Nicola stopped to help and gave him CPR until the ambulance arrived.  Paramedics gave him 3 shocks of a defibrillator before his heart re-started, by which time the Air Ambulance had landed in nearby Priory Park and he was flown by helicopter to King’s College Hospital in London for surgery.

Thankfully, and in no small part down to the two Good Samaritans who performed the CPR for so long, Francis survived and recovered very quickly and left hospital after 10 days and has now made a full recovery.  Very scary, but more so for Caron who watched the whole event unfold in front of her!  It makes you realise (if you haven’t already) how precious life is.

We are now fortunate to have a number of accessible Defibrillators in the Reigate area, although many of them are only available during working hours as they are mainly located in office buildings or shop premises. In addition to the new Defibrillator in Church Street, 24 hour access can also be found at Reigate Priory Cricket Club in Park Lane and Pistachios In the Park in Priory Park.

It is very important that businesses register their defibrillator with The Circuit as soon as they are installed so that 999 call operators can direct people to the nearest defibrillator to fetch and use while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

The Circuit is an online database that the emergency services use to log precisely where the defibrillators are. It’s updated every minute so that the information is timely and correct.

The location of 30,000 community defibrillators is known, but an estimated 70,000 devices are not yet registered – which is where the public can help.

If you are in charge of an organisation that has one, make sure you register the device with The Circuit.

Ordnance Survey can give it a Unique Property Reference Number to identify the precise location. This is far more accurate than postcodes and should help save more lives.