A life-saving campaign has scored its biggest goal so far after donating its first ever defibrillator to a school.
Almondbury Community School was the lucky one to receive the tenth crucial device now being used to tackle cardiac arrests in Kirklees, which Huddersfield Goals 4 Hearts has been delivering to community sports clubs for the past 12 months.
And its founder and heart attack survivor, Lee Orton, hopes that it will be the first of hundreds of schools to receive the equipment in Kirklees, which he hopes to see put in place in every place of education in the area within the next 18 months.
Lee collapsed with a heart attack while playing local football for Aimbry FC in August last year.
Luckily a retired nurse on the sidelines carried out cardiac massage on the stricken player for more than 10 minutes in a bid to keep the blood flowing, before Lee was resuscitated by rapid response paramedics armed with a defibrillator and rushed to hospital.
Talking about the landmark achievement, Lee, said: “It’s something that I’ve wanted to achieve through the charity since it was set up and accomplishing it at the same time as handing out our tenth defibrillator makes it a milestone achievement, especially as we’ve been going for just one year.
“Only a handful of schools across Kirklees have defibrillators on-site, which is crazy to think about, because every week 12-15 young people die from Sudden Cardiac Arrests in the UK and every year it claims more than a 100,000 lives which is more than breast cancer, lung cancer and aids combined.
“It’s so important to put defibrillators in schools because it could happen to anyone at any time and isn’t a disease that can easily be picked up on.
“These defibrillators can increase the chance of survival dramatically if used because every minute that goes by without a resuscitation attempt drastically decreases the chances of survival.”
Staff will receive free training from the West Yorkshire Ambulance Service next week, thanks to the charity, which Lee wants to roll out across the hundreds of other schools in the area.
Costing £850 to buy, he hopes that as many as possible will start their own fundraising campaign, which the charity will support.
The charity was handed more than £1,000 in 2013's Examiner Wish campaign, where special tokens were turned into cash for local charities and good causes.
Lee, said: “I hope that within the next 12 to 18 months defibrillators will be in every school and that schools get on board with fundraising.
“By just holding one non uniform day where each child pays one pound schools will be well on their way to the fundraising total, which will try to help them out with.
“In an urban area such as Kirklees there is a higher risk of someone having a cardiac arrest so it’s vital we get put these kits in place in as many places as we can.”
So far Goals 4 Hearts has also given nine devices to sports clubs including Aimbry FC, Brighouse Town FC, Brook Motors FC and Holmfirth Town FC.
