Automated external defibrillators (AED) have been put in at Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust offices to resuscitate staff or members of the public whose hearts have stopped.
Since 2008 the Trust has launched and installed AEDs in probation offices in Hanley, Tamworth, Cannock, Stafford and Burton-on-Trent.
Duncan Parsonage. Pic: West Midlands Ambulance Service
When a person suddenly stops breathing and loses consciousness the cause is often a condition where the heart is either beating too fast to pump blood and the only treatment for it is defibrillation.
Approximately 850,000 adults suffer a cardiac arrest every year and 85 per cent of them have the ability to be corrected by defibrillation.
West Midlands Ambulance Service has trained between six and ten volunteer staff at each office to be able to use the defibrillators in an emergency.
Community response manager for West Midlands Ambulance Service, Duncan Parsonage, said: "Every second really does count when someone is in cardiac arrest and for every minute a patient is in arrest, their chance of survival decreases by t pener cent.
"Current figures suggest that nationally only three to four per cent of those who suffer cardiac arrests survive, however within the West Midlands region this rate is currently approximately 45 per cent.
"We’d like to think that is down to the many community initiatives like this that have been put into place."
