A Gift of Life

An Auto External Defibrillator Unit has been donated toThe Hills Police Area Command by the Michael Hughes Foundation.

Paramedic Kevin McSweeney, the Chair and Founding Exec Director of MHK presented the AED unit to Hills Commander Superintendent Darrin Batchelor last week.

The aim of the foundation is to Turn Bystanders into First Responders and the unit will be placed in one of the station’s first response cars.

Supt Batchelor said: “Our General Duties and Highway Patrol are often the first responders on the scene of medical emergencies.

“We will now have the capability to rush these life saving devices to anywhere within the Command within minutes….. which may be the difference before paramedics arrive”.

MHF was established as a legacy to Michael Hughes who had a cardiac arrest in 2013, aged 38 years, and died.

Kevin said while cardiac arrest doesn’t discriminate by age there is one thing that separates survivors from those that die – public intervention.

He says it only takes 1 person to help save a life.

“We’ve got a better chance of bringing someone back if they’ve received CPR,” he said. “It takes an average of eight to 10 minutes to get to any given job and within 10 minutes there’s not a lot of hope if nothing is being done. CPR keeps the brain alive so we’ve got a much better chance of saving a life.”

“There are 33,000 Australians a year that have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and the survival rates I would suggest are less than nine per cent,” he said. For every minute that passes, survival decreases by 10%. With no response of CPR or defibrillation, the person will pass away. The average response time of an Ambulance is 10 minutes (Sydney Metro)

To find out more about the Foundation and the courses it runs visit www.mhf.life/.