A message of support from Gloucestershire:
People of Bristol, you don’t know how fortunate you are to have Simon Brookes taking your best interests to heart. And Simon is all about ‘heart’. As a committed and highly energetic volunteer, he has set himself the colossal challenge of trying to make public access defibs available to you all.
Let me give you two comparisons: In Wotton-under-Edge, a small town of under 6,000 people, there are 20 public access defibrillators. In the nearby village of Kingswood, which has around 1,500 inhabitants, there are 10 public access defibs, i.e. between 1 defib per 150 people to 1 per 300. Bristol’s population is about half a million, so on a per capita basis Bristol needs hundreds – even thousands of defibs.
Life-saving defibrillators are becoming ever more vital. With our NHS in general and our ambulance service in particular severely overstretched, it is increasingly becoming more important for individuals to help others when they are in life-threatening stress.
Please support Simon and help support yourselves. Remember, ideally a defib needs to be with a patient in 3-5 minutes. As the Americans are fond of saying “Go figure”!