Healthcash insurance provider Westfield Health has joined one of the UK’s first lifesaving network partnerships to make Sheffield a safer place to live, work and visit.
The Sheffield AED Network, coordinated by Yorkshire Ambulance Service, is one of the first initiatives outside London to provide a network of sites across the city centre that house an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).
AEDs are used to deliver a controlled electric shock to restart someone’s heart if it stops and to provide early intervention to patients suffering a cardiac arrest, which is one of the keys to survival.
More than 260,000 people suffer a heart attack in the UK each year, about a third of which die before reaching hospital due to cardiac arrest.
The defibrillators work by delivering a controlled electric shock through the chest wall to the heart to restore a normal heartbeat after a cardiac arrest. The faster this treatment is delivered, the better the outcome for the patient.
