Apr 19th, 2007
Carrigaline wins Heartsafe Accreditation
In April 2007, the town of Carrigaline achieved what is known as ‘Heartsafe’ status from the Irish Heart Foundation. This means that people in Carrigaline are never more than eight minutes away from an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and a person trained in CPR.
Mr. Dónal Browning, President of the Carrigaline Lions Club at the time, thanked the Minister for attending the event and showing his support, before he said: “This programme was implemented through the partnership of the Carrigaline Lions Club, Pfizer and the Irish Heart Foundation, and we are particularly grateful to Pfizer for showing this community such a caring commitment. The Lions club has been serving Carrigaline since 1988 and we were honoured that Pfizer approached us as liaisons to the community. I can ensure that our commitment to the Heartsafe programme will continue in the future and I would like to extend particular thanks to Conor Phelan and the sub-committee of the Lions Club that made this possible.”
Nearly four hundred people were accredited and recognised for showing commitment that will help make their community one of the safest in Ireland in terms of cardiac arrest. Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr. Micheal Martín TD attended the event in the Carrigaline Court hotel and he praised the citizens of Carrigaline for the care they have shown each other.
Carrigaline is a community of more than 15,000 people and in order to make a town of this size Heartsafe, 300 local people undertook CPR training with a further 92 taking training in the use of AEDs. This is backed up by the strategic placement of ten AEDs around the community and this does not include defibrillators already present in some GP surgeries.
