Credit Union grant buys defibrillator
The device has been placed near the entrance to the Centre, and is available for the complete campus, which is host to or used regularl by more than 15 clubs and organisations.
It's the latest of its kind, and requires no advance knowledge for use, according to the Centre's manager PJ Lydon. "All anyone has to do is take it from its housing and listen to the instructions which will be spoken by the device," he told the Diary.
The grant of €1,800 from the Kildare Credit Union, with which Kilcullen Credit Union merged last year, was provided specifically for the defibrillator. PJ plans to organise a familiarisation meeting with representatives of all the groups located on the campus, and a set of instructions on the use of the device will also be circulated to each.
The location of the unit was chosen for being easily found in an emergency, and it is also monitored in real time 24 hours a day by the Centre's modern CCTV system.
Access to such a device has been proven to save lives. When someone goes into cardiac arrest, there's a critical — and very short — period during which the heart can be restarted before there is permanent damage or death.
"At any given busy time there can be several hundred people active on the Community Centre campus," PJ Lydon notes. "There are probably statistics that show the likelihood of one of them having a heart attack. Whatever those are, if having the defibrillator available saves one life, that's worth far more than can be valued against the cost of the unit."
