Norfolk charity calling on more schools to rollout CPR training
The appeal comes ahead of 'Restart a Heart Day 2025' on Thursday, October 16th
A local mum who saved her daughter's life via CPR is calling on more schools to rollout training on it.
Jayne Biggs from Bradwell has installed over 400 defibrillators in Norfolk and Suffolk through her charity Heart 2 Heart.
She and her husband Tony performed life-saving CPR on Violet after she suddenly went into cardiac arrest one evening in February 2013.
Paramedics got to their house in seven minutes. They shocked Violet once with a defibrillator and performed CPR for a further two minutes. Violet survived and went onto spend a month in hospital, where she was diagnosed with a sudden death condition called Long QT Syndrome.
She was given an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) that monitors the heart 24 hours a day and provides a shock if needed.
Following Violet’s cardiac arrest, Jayne began raising money to install public access defibrillators across Norfolk and Suffolk after discovering there was a shortage in the region.
"The difference is huge"
She told us why it's so important to get everyone trained up, on this:
"The demand for the likes of defibrillators are high now because, as we know, our ambulance services are absolutely stretched.
"A category call is still seven minutes but I go to some villages for training and people tell me there that they're waiting for around two hours.
"If somebody has a cardiac arrest their chances of survival without CPR is 5 per cent. If it's with CPR along it's nine per cent. Add a defibrillator to that then that rises to sixty per cent.
"So the difference is huge.
"In 2020, CPR was made part of the national curriculum for high-schools. However, due to the pressures and workloads on teachers, some just aren't able to do it".
Jayne has now given thousands of people CPR and defibrillation training through her free community sessions and also goes into schools.