An AED needs to be accessible 24/7. That may sound logical but most of the AED’s in Best are located inside a building and therefore only accessible during business hours. Stichting Hartslag will do everything within their power to change that.
Ideally, when a cardiac arrest is reported, medical assistance should be there in six minutes. In order to achieve that, a lot op people need to be trained to operate an AED and obviously, the AED’s these people use must be close by and accessible.
Last year, Hartslag trained about 35 people on resuscitation and also installed 3 AED’s. Another 9 will follow soon. They will be put in special temperature cabinets which were donated to Hartslag by Hartstichting (through Vriendenloterij).
In 2016 a neighbourhoud bought an AED from their neighbourhood budget and they installed it somewhere on a wall outside. Within 6 months this AED was picked up 5 times, 4 times outside the own neighbourhood. Then the municipality was contacted because obviously there is a huge need for more of these AED’s. The city council agreed on this and started to support several initiatives in this area. So Stichting Hartslag was founded in April 2017. Their goal is to realize and maintain a covering network of AEDs and civilian aid workers.
Of course they got some fundings in but they definitely need more. Recently, they got the so called ANBI status which gives them an official status. Donations made to Hartslag are now deductable from income taxes.
I talked to Els van Hapert – Gortemuller and Ad van Laarhoven, board members of Hartslag: “Please take a resuscitation course. But even if you haven’t, have the guts to use such an AED anyway in case of emergency. The AED itself will tell you exactly how to operate it. It’s a matter of life and death!”