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This week’s Costa Blanca People is the final edition of 2018. There will be no edition next week (December 25th) and you will be able to pick up your next edition of your essential weekly read on Wednesday, 2nd January.
CostaBlancaPeople 18th-24th December
Huge success for Costa Blanca People Defibrillator Campaign purred by many stories of lives that may have been saved if ambulances were earlier, road names clearer, equipment more comprehensive or emergency services locally based; in the summer the Costa Blanca People launched its Defibrillator Campaign. Our aim was to raise enough money to buy a defibrillator for each of the Local Police cars that patrol Orihuela Costa. The thinking behind our reasoning is simple; the local police are always called to the scene of any incident in the local community. As they know the area very well and are based locally, they are often the first to respond and arrive. For this reason, if officers arrive and there is a medical problem that involves someone’s heart, carrying a defib would allow the officers to save lives without having to wait for an ambulance to arrive. However, we soon realised it wasn’t
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going to be quite as straight forward as we first thought. In the Valencian community only medical personal or members of the public who have been specially trained by a certified trainer can use defibrillators. Therefore, despite the fact all police officers are first aid trained, they would need further specialised training to carry the defibs on shift. Added to that, in order to cover shift patterns, holidays and sick leave a high number of officers would need training. Another hurdle was the defibs themselves. Each defib has to have a second battery, which are not included in the price. It is also necessary to have both adult and child pads and each machine has to be professionally maintained each year – all of course at additional cost. We spoke to a number of key figures and charities within the local community and soon had a great support for our campaign. Help Vega Baja donated €1500
which brought one of the defibs, a spare battery and extra pads and paid for part of the training for the police officers. We raised money at the 2018 Culinary Awards through a charity donation competition and Moneycorp rounded the figure up to allow us to buy another defib. The rest of the money to buy the remaining life-saving equipment, batteries, pads and training was raised by Help at Home Costa Blanca, in fact at a staggering €11,000 raised and collected by the charity an extra defib (so six in total) will be given to the Cruz Roja for its new ambulance that will operate across the Vega Baja. This is an amazing result and a fantastic end to our defib campaign and we are extremely grateful for the help and support shown to us by the community and in particular by these wonderful charities. The defibrillators are now on order and a meeting is being arranged to discuss the final details with the relevant Councillor and the Chief of the Local Police.
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