Lifesaving lessons in Tower Hamlets helping survive heart attacks

Lifesaving lessons are being offered to voluntary groups in the East End to help more people survive heart attacks before the ambulance arrives.

Lifesaving lessons are being offered to voluntary groups in the East End to help more people survive heart attacks before the ambulance arrives.

The London Ambulance Service has set up a dedicated team of community training paramedics to teach Heartstart, a simple lifesaving course free to voluntary, community and charity groups.

Tower Hamlets training officer Claire Adams said: “Bystanders are only stepping in a third of the time. Yet the number of people surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has gone up for the third year running.”

More people whose heart suddenly stopped at home or in public were resuscitated and discharged from hospital in the last 12 moths than the previous year—a total of 259 compared to 237.

Many have been saved by staff at public places like Underground stations who have been trained to use the 600 public-access defibrillators in London donated by the British Heart Foundation, which is also funding this latest training programme.