The donation came about following the tragic news of nine-year-old Jordon Banks who was sadly struck and killed by lightning during a football training session in Blackpool.
And the value of defibrillators at sports pitches was back in the headlines this week following the collapse of Danish footballer Christian Erikson in his country’s Euro match against Finland.
Under 16s manager Derek Ward contacted us, who have previously donated defibrillators from completed developments to nearby communities, to see if we could provide a defibrillator for the club to have should it ever be needed.
Eddie Carpenter, chairman of Victoria Colts said: “Now we have the life-saving defibrillator, it means that should someone ever need it, either from the club or the local community, we have one. Obviously, we hope it never has to be used but it’s reassuring to know we have one. We’re extremely grateful to Redrow.”
The club, that was established in 1994, has boys’ and girls’ teams that range from under 5s to open age men’s teams.
Jason Newton, managing director in the North West, said: “Following on from the sad news about Jordan Banks’ death, when the club reached out to us, we were keen to help."
"In the past we’ve rehomed defibrillators from completed developments such as Regent’s Grange in Chester within local communities. This time, we didn’t have any defibrillators available from our sites but we still wanted to help. The value of defibrillators has been brought even more into focus this week with the on-pitch collapse of Christian Eriksen. They really are a life-saver.”
We have defibrillators at all of our live developments and regional offices across England and Wales, which can be accessed by staff, contractors and the local community in the event of a medical emergency. We have also created an eLearning module about the use of the defibrillators, which is available to all staff.
The newly donated defibrillator will be housed at Tranmere Victoria’s Cricket Club on Bebington Road, where the football club’s pitches are. In the event of an emergency the person calling 999 will be given an access code to unlock the case once they have confirmed that they are dealing with a cardiac arrest.
If combined with effective CPR within a few minutes of the incident, the use of a defibrillator increases the potential survivability of an out of hospital cardiac arrest from just 5% to 75%.
To find out more about where we’re building across the region visit: North West.
